


Forms

by Trebia



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), IT AIN'T INCEST, Non-Linear Narrative, Reylo - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 11:09:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 36,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5454443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trebia/pseuds/Trebia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are children with matchsticks, him and her.</p>
<p><a href="http://8tracks.com/calyxofawildflower/forms">8track</a> by <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/whisperthroughthewall/pseuds/calyxofawildflower">calyxofawildflower</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Form I: Shii-Cho

**Form I: Shii-Cho**

 

_“Also known as the Way of the Sarlacc or Determination Form. The most basic of the lightsaber Forms, and the first of those taught to any lightsaber-wielding emotions, Shii-Cho is also among the oldest of those created for use with a lightsaber.”_

 

**S** he knows a hunger on Jakku. Credits are tightly controlled by the overseers. Currency comes in the form of bartering with scrap for the basics - condensed rations and water. Old Traz, a veteran scrapper that minds her until she can scavenge on her own, tries her best to get her two quarter-half portions a day instead of one. Gradually Rey stops growing and all the meager body fat from her youth sloughs off, the thinness of her collarbones and the hollow look of her face frightening her when she gets near something reflective.

 

Another hunger is cast skyward, her eyes tracking the expanse of sky for any sign of incoming freighters or transports, which are few. Her hope is that one day a faceless figure of a parent will disembark and take her to wherever home is. The fantasy keeps the loneliness from eating her whole. So she fashions an old piece of scrap to scratch the days into the durasteel bulkheads in her bolthole, a gutted AT-AT lying on its side like a picked-over carcass eroding in the sand.

 

The hunger slackens in her gut the less she tries to think about the future and more about surviving the day to day. Wake up, splash a little rationed water on her face, make her way with the rest of the scavengers before the sun is up to pick over what is left in the starship graveyard. She comes back to the outpost, barters for whatever she can get out of her meager finds for the day, then returns to the bolthole to sleep, eat, then do it all over again the next day.

 

When Finn and BB-8 appear, the hunger edges its way back into her. The chaos of what follows warps time, only catching up when she can feel Jakku’s gravity gripping their stolen freighter as it pulls out of the atmosphere. The haze of sky turns into a star field - already she can feel the strings tying her to Jakku, wanting to return already to the dark of her hovel and keep waiting for nothing to happen.

 

Her name is Rey, and she knows hunger.

 

\----

 

The hunger is back. She sees it in his eyes when he finally takes off the mask and reveals a long face that gives every emotion away. From a vulnerable mouth to wide eyes, he can’t hide _anything_ as each emotion flits across his expression like passing clouds - all at once anger, frustration, despair, longing. It wrenches her gut.

 

Then he reaches out for her, confusion as she feels him in her mind. He catches glimpses of that strange holoshow that has been running through her mind since Jakku.

 

_Ocean, island, green_ -

 

Then Rey shoves with something she didn’t know she had. The flood pouring into him from her mind cinches off, then the flow reverses. They’re images laced with words in his voice, flashing by as quickly as if she were on a speeder passing them. Leia and Han, younger, proud expressions turned towards him. A grizzled man, holding out a training blade to him. The dark lump of an old, melted mask leaking power into his hands.

 

Suddenly it’s whiplash arousal flooding through her, power she never knew surging. As novice as she is, she manages to unsettle him with her words. “You’re afraid.” Rey is so certain of it, but is reeling with the fact that fear has a taste, a tangible sound. And it is intoxicating.

 

Then she pours every ounce of herself into her next words as the image comes to the forefront of his mind, brought on by his fear. The mask, melted and ruined, and a name. His expression is falling into one of disbelief.

 

“ _You’re afraid you’ll never be as strong as Darth Vader_.”

 

\----

 

She can feel whatever is unfurling within her clash with the unseen power that rolls off him in waves, even from this distance. Finn watches with her.

 

The bridge spans long and narrow over the chasm. Rey feels a horrible sense of having seen this exact same scene before and knows how it ends, long ago. It plays out in a clash of light as the sun’s rays drains off Ben Solo’s face and the red bleeds over. Then only Kylo Ren stands there, igniting the saber.

 

Rey _screams_ and her mind stops on an image. Han, touching her shoulder, the slant of his smile favoring what she thought her father might’ve looked like, if she could remember him. Then time starts again with Chewie’s roar. Han falls.

 

\----

 

Later the words, unbidden, come to mind. _You need a teacher_ , from a man barely out of boyhood. They’re locked together, breast and belly, sabers grating off one another. Hers has a calm, true beam that burns straight lines through the air. A flake of snow fizzles off the clash they make as Kylo Ren’s saber gives off that odd, unstable shriek and the beam rages like a flame. "I could show you the ways of the Force," he insists, near-pleading with her.

 

Their eyes lock and she sinks into him.

 

Forms come to mind. She sees an older man with disciples, Ren chiefly among them as they are guided through drills with hovering remotes. They are anywhere from children to grown adults, barely learning their way with this strange power emerging in them.

 

Block, pivot, slash. She _knows_ these movements.

 

_Of course you do_ , a dry voice in her head supplies. The sound of it brings her off balance, bewildering in clarity as something takes over her. Rey feels like a stranger in her own skin as she sees Ren’s advances and blows before they happen, can smell the tang of his blood as it does a slow _drip drip_ from his robes into the snow.

 

_Mind your flank_ , the voice warns. She brings her saber up to catch on Ren’s swing.

 

\----

 

Rey feels something important in the stretch of broken earth between her and Ren. Something savage in her chest, the hunger, as he lies broken and bleeding on the other side. Rey feels the strength in her legs now that this power, bracing her, surges through. Rey is faster, stronger, wiser. She feels incarnate of something, a force that urges her to finish this. The jump over the chasm is merely a step. Rey can finish this - for Han. For everyone.

 

But the other half wars with that feeling. She understands Ren’s words on the bridge now, this struggle tearing him apart. Rey feels it kindling, the whispers fighting against that bright, burning thing inside her. So she turns her back to his shocked gaze, the cut she gave him already furrowing into an ugly gash across his face, and runs.

 

They’re children playing with matchsticks, Ren and Rey.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, conductor, one ticket to join the probably problematic ship and trashboat.
> 
> Also, if I misquote any lines, holler. I'm just working off of memory from the one viewing I saw last night.
> 
> [Shii-Cho quote source](http://www.jediholo.net/archives/documents/form-i-shii-cho/)


	2. Form II: Makashi

**Form II: Makashi**

 

_“Also known as the Way of the Ysalamari or Contention Form. Though generally considered by many modern lightsaber users to be archaic, Makashi has nonetheless become a more prominent form of lightsaber combat among Jedi, since it is often considered likely that two opposed saber-wielders will eventually meet in combat. It is a form designed primarily for those that find lightsaber-to-lightsaber combat to be more involved than simple blaster deflection...”_

 

 **H** e knew she would pose a nuisance the minute an officer broke the news to him that FN-2187 escaped capture on the freighter with her and the droid in tow. She was faceless then, an unknown factor in an already complicated problem.

 

They evacuate Starkiller Base before the planet collapses in on itself and start the slow retreat to the seat of the First Order’s Supreme Leader. He spends half of the journey in a kolto tank, brooding as the wounds from the battle heal. He breaks the first med-droid in his rage before Hux himself comes in to instruct him in how very, _very_ inadvisable it is to break the next they send in. The only thing keeping Hux from a slow death by asphyxiation is the feeling that his master would be extremely displeased with him if he were to space Hux.

 

So he simply sneers at the general and continues to let his mind sharpen on a point. His grandfather commanded the respect and fear of his crew. Everything Hux refuses to show towards him.

 

The time comes when his wounds heal over and he is discharged from the medbay. The droids there offer to fix his face with a skin graft, but he stubbornly refuses for reasons he can’t quite fathom. So he lays there in his quarters, staring ceilingward while the rest of him mends. His helmet lays in his armory along with his saber, practically useless as the girl shattered one of the crossguard’s emitters with grandfather’s saber.

 

_Thief. Scavenger._

 

He lays in his dim quarters and spends the long hours of the day cycle pouring over a holopad to find some sign of her. _Rey_ , was her name. A scavenger from Jakku with no known history in the databanks the First Order kept, nor on the Galactic Senate’s side of the holonet after he spliced through a firewall. She was no one. He brings up surveillance captures from the few feeds that managed to upload before Starkiller Base went offline, freezing the screen of his holopad on her face.

 

The knight tries to remember the weight of her in his arms as he carried her to the shuttle. She was solid like stone, but brittle-thin from a life spent somewhere that made it a struggle to put on weight and muscle. The stormtroopers pointedly ignored him when he sat in the back of his shuttle, the girl’s body spread over a bench.

 

It should’ve occurred to him then, that faint press of power as she struggled to come awake while the shuttle pulled away from Takodana. A mere push back with his mind had sent her deep into the lower levels of unconsciousness. He should’ve been more mindful. The device in his hand crumples in a shower of sparks. He throws it into a bin and clenches his hands on his knees, his grip white-knuckled.

 

\----

 

When he dreams, he is on the green world of D’Qar and can smell custard bread and gingerbells, familiar scents that cling to his mother’s clothing as he holds her. Only it’s not him. It’s _her_ holding his mother as she weeps, silent dry heaves with her face hidden in Rey's tunic. Then the dream takes another shape. Kylo Ren can see his father falling and his mother shouting _Ben_ before it morphs into the higher pitch of the girl’s screaming.

 

\----

 

He suffers when he finally stands before his master. The pain goes on for days, but it is instructive.

 

The Knights of Ren, some from his own class of failed Jedi that joined him in overthrowing his fool of an uncle, begin a months-long training regime - all with the mind to complete him. A few fall in the process, inferior in combat where there is no excuse for weakness. They are culled to make more room for hopefuls that Snoke has eyes on already.

 

It’s on such a day during training that he realizes what exists between the girl and himself.

 

He wakes after a few fitful hours of sleep, rolling out of bed to force his body to stand upright and come alive. His mask and robes sit untouched on a desk while he tugs on a tunic and trousers, the soft hide of his boots making no sound on the floor as he marks off another day on the bare duracrete wall of his cell. Then he goes through the motion of stretches left over from the academy days of his youth. Still useful, and apparently universal to both Sith and Jedi.

 

He sits on the cold floor and meditates for a useless hour, finding no focus. He lacks focus. Kylo has been told as much by both masters, Skywalker and Snoke alike. The criticism does nothing to sharpen his will to master the training - only his ire. These things should come naturally to someone from his bloodline, yet he fails time and again to bring himself to that storm’s eye that is a Sith’s precise rage just as he failed to rid himself of all emotion when he was younger.

 

\----

 

Uncle Luke is sitting weird on the floor of the apartment on Coruscant. He’s watching Ben with Artoo while mom sits in on a boring senate hearing with Threepio. Dad is off-world with Chewie. _Again._ Ben is supposed to be asleep, but sleep is so _boring_ when Uncle Luke is visiting.

 

His uncle exhales after what seems like _forever_ of just sitting there in front of the windows. “Jedi know when scamps are out of bed after light’s out,” Luke finally warns him, but not serious like mom gets when she finds him on the couch after bedtime. More like dad, who lets him stay up as late as he wants. His uncle doesn’t move an inch.

 

“Can you show me?” Ben asks tentatively as he peeks his head around the corner. They stayed up all night watching action holos and daring each other to eat pieces of weird looking Trandoshan takeout from the diner down in CoCo Town mom takes him to.

 

Luke seems to think about it, like he’s not really sure if he should. Then, “C’mere, Ben,” as he waves him over, patting the spot next to him. Ben rushes over and folds himself up small next to his uncle, careful to not make any noise and keep very still like he’s seen Luke do a million times. His uncle reaches over to tousles his messy mop of hair, strands falling into his eyes. Ben shoves it to let it stick up on its ends.

 

“First thing you do is focus on your breathing - puff your chest out. Just like that, Ben.”

 

\----

 

His saber flies into his hand from where he keeps it, tucked between the layers of his field cot.

 

Winding mazes make up this particular training complex. His feet guide him towards the center of it and he arrives to an open air training yard choked with vines from the jungle spilling over the stonework.

 

A grey-scaled Nikto stands at the ready in the sparring ring, already having completed a series of exercises with the training droids. They crackle in a heap of desh and broken wiring while stormtroopers make the effort to clean them off the flagstones.

 

Tau Ren is the name the man took when his old one was left behind, much like his brothers and sisters in this new order of dark-siders. Kylo Ren is seen as somewhat of a leader among them, even now. They respect the raw power, but already he feels the stirrings of discontent with some of the developing knights that feel they could outpace him as an apprentice. Now that word is going around about his failure in the Unknown Regions against a nascent slip of a girl that by all means should be Force-blind, many hopefuls amass to unseat him. He’s already answered two challenges and killed both contenders to prove to the others that he is _not easy game._

 

“Late,” Tau greets, forcing himself into a stretch that pops his vertebrae. Kylo goes over to his side of the ring, waving off the offer of a training bout with the spare droids. He’s ready.

 

“Meditation didn’t take,” he explains, shrugging into his stance. “Duel to first blood.” Typically he names the terms. Depending on how foul a mood he’s in, he either chooses sparring bouts or outright death matches. Today he doesn’t fancy killing the only one in the complex that can hold a conversation.

 

“Did you even _try_ to get near the relics like I suggested?” Tau asks, igniting his saber. Most of the knights used holocrons to accelerate their meditation, guided by the whispers of Sith long dead to pour their hatred and fear into a point of power within them.

 

“I will not use a _crutch_ ,” he grates back, his saber igniting. The beam is purer, clearly defined with only a minor flux around its edges. The crystal was replaced, yet the emitters retain this particular quirk, which he decided to keep. The two charge each other and fall into the old routine. He and Tau are known for long-winded matches as they are evenly matched duelists paired with each other for maximum efficiency in training.

 

Kylo sinks into the trance that is the duel. Pivot, lunge, turn. Regress, spin. No fancy leaps in this tight space. Sweat starts to bead beneath his tunic and across his brow, plastering his hair. The water clock in the center of the training yard reads midday - they started at sun's rise. Something brings his arm up when he feels the burn of exhaustion creep into the limb, accelerating his blows. Counterstrikes unknown to him come to mind, and her parries Tau’s heavy swings with an ease he’s not felt in years. The grey and green of the courtyard blur. He’s not here, he’s _elsewhere_ and so is Skywalker, coaching _her_ through another series of dueling forms. He can feel the sweat beading on the small of her back, the breath in her lungs. The faint scent of something like sunlight overpowers him. Kylo feels rage simmer as he pulls himself out of her mind.

 

Kylo blunts his attacks into more refined strikes, valuing footwork over wild lunges. He wears Tau down, edging him around the dueling circle until he sees his gap. He feints left, strikes right, and is almost surprised that he scores a glancing blow down the Nikto’s scaled arm, ripping a burn into his robe and the skin beneath. Tau simply whistles, the match concluding as they relax their stances and kill the beams on their sabers.

 

“Getting quicker, knight.” It’s the most praise Kylo has gotten in a year.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MORE TRASH FOR THE TRASH GOD
> 
>    
> [Makashi quote source](http://www.jediholo.net/archives/documents/form-ii-makashi/)


	3. Form III: Soresu

**Form III: Soresu**

 

_“Also known as the Way of the Mynock or Resilience Form. Soresu is primarily practiced amongst the Jedi, for the simple reason that it is a passive form, focusing purely on the principles of defense and deflection as opposed to aggressive attacks or the intent to dominate the opponent through whatever means are necessary. As a result, this technique has almost never been observed as being used by Sith, who have no real need of it, since they use their lightsabers to destroy their opponents as opposed to simply fight their adversaries to an impasse by defending themselves in order to permit the possibility of negotiation in defeat.”_

 

 **M** onths pass on the island for Rey after Chewie heads back to join the Resistance with the _Falcon_. Frustrating months, as at first the Force ebbs out of her like a tide whenever she reaches blindly for that place inside her that gave her so much before. Master Luke tells her it is only natural - a crack in the cup that can’t hold water like it used to. So she has to learn from scratch.

 

Rey sleeps on a cot near the fire, waking up soot-streaked at the crack of dawn to cook their rations over the burner. Master Luke seemed almost taken aback by how accustomed she was to rough living at first. Her skin loses its bronze cast from this planet’s overcast sky, but she begins to put on more fighting weight. She runs longer, harder. Weight that she should’ve crumpled under becomes an easier burden. Leaps of such great distances that should by all means be impossible are tangible things to master, now.

 

The exercises are grueling and bordering on ridiculous. Balance on this wall, raise this rock, but not _too_ high and hold it there for six hours. Rey almost fails to see the point in it, but knows it’s there. Just really, _really_ deep.

 

Meditation comes the easiest. Every day, before the rising of the sun, she joins Luke on a rocky tor that faces out towards the ocean. It can take hours for her to properly ignore the harsh bite of shale digging into her knees or the bothersome insects that want to make a meal out of her skin. Somedays it’s useless, but gradually she learns to empty herself, as if by tiny handfuls.

 

Then she feels the hum. Her master, a beacon beside her. Almost distractingly loud and bright. If she reaches outwards, smaller sparks in the darkness. Luke tells her she’s feeling the island and the ocean around them, and that one day that range will widen to dizzying distances. Rey isn’t certain how she feels about that.

 

“Your focus is better than mine was at your age,” Luke admits after their morning meditation one day, amusement crinkling his worn face. Rey feels something bloom in her chest. Pride, maybe. She tamps down on it and sinks further into that cool current, feeling the movement of that unseen thing that hums in her skin, the grass, the rocks. Everywhere.

 

They speak of everything and nothing. Her past, his past. Her life on Jakku, the blank void she remembers before Jakku. Rey doesn’t talk about her family and Luke pointedly doesn’t ask. She is careful around questions about Ren, or _Ben_ as he seems an open wound to her teacher whenever talk of him comes up. Han as well. Finally one night, after four standard months on the island, she asks.

 

\----

 

“Why did he do it?”

 

Luke pauses in stirring something into his tea. They’ve lain out the pazaak cards on the driftwood table in the hut, the only piece of furniture besides their cots. It’s a distraction to fill the nights between training, meals, and sleep. He’s a consummate master at it while Rey is still learning. She’s only managed to beat him a handful of times, and always with a little reliance on the Force to read his moves.

 

“When Ben was young,” Luke finally starts after she lays out their hands from the deck, as if the story is a physical pain to speak of, “I told him about a prophecy once told to me.”

 

Rey keeps quiet and lets him get into the details. The Force, a chosen one, his father, his mother, his sister. How it all tied into this convoluted, cosmic plan that the galaxy brought about to bring balance back to the chaos. It’s too surreal for her to believe just yet, but she senses something true in her master’s words.

 

“So is he the chosen one?”

 

“Not quite sure who is the chosen one at this point,” Luke admits, his expression rueful as he lays down a card. “First I’d thought it was my father, then myself. Even Leia. Now Ben. The Force is strong in our family, but it never seems to single anyone of us out and establish _who_ is the chosen one when every last one of us was gifted with it.”

 

“And how do I fit into this?”

 

Luke looks at her across the table and opens his mouth, then shuts it.

 

Rey twists her fingers into her tunic, eyeing her cards. “I can feel him. Deep, like an undercurrent. It’s worse when I sleep. Am I supposed to feel him like that?”

 

“It’s a side effect of his power. Exerting that much control over your mind leaves you open to his suggestions if you’re not Force sensitive. But your defenses are preternaturally strong - you blocked him.” Luke beats her hand. Again. “Blocking him made him push harder into you. He put more of himself into your head and vice versa. It might fade with time, but right now the resonance is deep in you both.”

 

Rey thinks she understands. They play another round in silence before she breaks.

 

“He’s just so... _angry_ at everything, sometimes,” she spits out, laying a fist on the table. Luke watches her with a guarded expression. “It’s getting better, but he can’t stop throwing tantrums - whenever he’s wounded or worn down he simply feeds off the pain or the anger to get stronger, beats his fist at a burn or a blaster hit to amplify his power. It’s...” she trails off.

 

Ren sleeps about as little as she does. Rey catches snatches of his thoughts and memories the more she opens herself to the flow around her, which frightens her immeasurably.

 

What if next time, he could control her? She isn’t strong enough yet to face him at full power. This she knows. He could open her mind up to suggestion if he wounded her enough, and Rey knew it would be like warm, dark water swallowing her mind. The allure was there. She could feel its pull the second he suggested he could teach her the way. Rey’s fingers tighten around the lightsaber belted to her hip.

 

Her master’s calm voice makes her to look up from her cards. “He can’t internalize his anger or his pain. What you saw was him cutting corners to fuel his energy - the pain from the hits to the wound gave him bursts of power. He wasn’t trying to kill you - only subdue and capture,” he lays down a card - a perfect twenty. Rey reshuffles as Luke leans back as she deals again.

 

“I figured that,” she admits after a while, staring at the cards in her hand.

 

“He’s looking for an apprentice," Luke explains, his eyes scanning the cards in his hand with very little interest. "Someone he can exercise control and a measure of trust towards - build up the base of his power to overcome his master. Something my father once tried to do with me, and failed. You’ll be hunted, now. He’ll attempt to seduce your better senses to see his path as the right way, the only way to overtake his master and win control of the First Order.”

 

“How is it that he wants to kill Snoke?” she asks, her brow furrowing in confusion.

 

“Because that’s the ambition of all Sith. To be at the top of the pile and the head of all tables. Ben thinks, _thought_ he could unify the galaxy by killing Snoke. And that the path of the Jedi was far too passive to defeat him. He needed power, and Sith are nothing if not powerful. The best person to kill a Sith is another Sith. My father did so, nearly thirty years ago. At a great cost.”

 

“Did Ben outline this plan to you?” Rey lays down her cards. An odd rushing sound fill her ears as her blood starts to pound in her veins. Luke manages to look up at her. His face is ashen and he looks tired, so damned _tired_.

 

“He didn’t need to.”

 

“So he kills Han? _His father_ \- to strengthen himself? Because only a true Sith can kill Snoke? To bring balance to the Force? Why are you just _sitting here_ on this island when you’re supposed to be _out there_ with the rest of us? We need you. _Han_ needed you. General Organa needs you _right this instant_.” She sees his expression crack by the twitch of his mouth into a deep frown. It’s the closest thing she’s gotten to a reaction.

 

“I’ve seen his hesitation. There is still good in him, but he _needs you, master_.” Her voice rises in an unsteady pitch. She stands up from the table and Luke makes no move to stop her.

 

“You’re going to let him finish it like this, aren’t you?” Her mind races and her words get ahead of her. “And I pick up where he leaves off if he should fail - _when_ he fails. He’s _Vader_ doing it _his_ way, I’m _you_ doing it _your_ way,” she spits out, her hands making fists.

 

Luke warns her, “Rey.” But she’s already slamming the door to of the hut. She starts down the rocky path to pace a ditch in the soft sand and try to stop her hands from shaking. Her life isn't orchestrated by some prophecy.

 

\----

 

Chewie comes to get her within days of her holocall. Luke doesn’t make an effort to make her stay, only warning her that she has yet to complete her training. She sees a lone figure on the tor when the _Falcon_ lifts off, the island receding into the distance.

 

“ _Bad fight_?” Chewie growls out in Shyriiwook.

 

“Something like that.” Rey pretends to wipe an imaginary speck of dust off the console, her voice hoarse.

 

“ _Han used to do the same thing with him_ ,” Chewie tells her once they make the jump to lightspeed. He clamps a paw over her shoulder in an affectionate squeeze that nearly dislocates the joint. He lets up and Rey smiles at him, trying to be reassuring, but it doesn’t make it to her eyes.

 

\----

 

“I got frustrated with him,” Rey admits to General Organa over a holocall a week later. The older woman’s smile is omniscient.

 

“You can say the truth - Luke can be a vague, enigmatic pain in the ass.”

 

Rey nearly jerks the _Falcon’s_ controls straight into a dive in shock. She hears something heavy hit the deck in the main hold and winces at Chewie’s pained roar. The general simply grins.

 

\----

 

Enter one of her less stellar moments a few months later.

 

She’s in the Expansion Region, just off the Vaathkree Trade Corridor in the Prackla sector. The corridor is woefully overmanned with First Order scout ships. She has to drop out of the hyperspace route and tuck the _Falcon_ up against the lee of an asteroid field to avoid one passing patrol, _then_ got an advisory on the sector-wide channel that this particular region of space was now under an electrical storm warning and if you weren’t already high tailing it out on the route to _stay put_ if you valued your ship’s shielding and your life.

 

She dropped Chewie off on Kashyyyk a week ago to deal with what he described as important tribal business. The idea is for Rey to join up with the Resistance on Ord Mantell after a fruitless month spent in Hutt space bartering for information on First Order military movements and strategies. The goal is finding where Snoke is in an effort to cut off the head of the problem and let the rest of it die. So far Rey is coming up with cold leads and even colder responses from the gangsters.

 

Rey discovered very quickly that the Hutts are still pretty sore over General Organa’s part in the demise of one of their more venerated slime lords.

 

The _Falcon_ has a Chedak Frequency Agile subspace transceiver that she rarely uses. She opens up the frequency every six hours to check for distress signals and hails from anyone else in this sector, as it has a range of about forty lightyears, give or take interference. Which in an asteroid field saturated with an electrical storm means a _lot_ of interference. Rey meets dead static on the frequency every time she puts out an encrypted hail under the callsign _Hardwired_.

 

Twelve hours into what promises to be a very long storm sees her picking over her reheated freeze-dried meal from the food synthesizer in the galley. Rey trudges back to the cockpit and turns on reruns of a Republic holoshow she’s gotten into.

 

She’s sleeping in the pilot’s seat when the first blip crosses her sensors. It’s a ship answering her hail, not yet in visual range. It’s approaching from the other end of the field - what she can tell from its transponder codes is that it's seemingly a simple shuttle. Rey feels the tingle of something at the back of her mind. She wants to ignore it, but it trickles down her spine to form a tight knot in her stomach. Ah. The old Force sensitivity kicking in at the worst of times.

 

The pilot of the shuttle starts sending her comm messages over the ship’s mainframe once she accepts his codes. First Order, no doubt. But she’s a smuggler by all appearances. The trick is to convincingly pass _herself_ off as one. The shuttle opens up a comm chat.

 

_Voidwing: What’s a shark doing this far out?_

 

Rey grins. The pilot knows the smuggler’s cant, a particular brand of doublespeak that's like a second language to people like Han and Chewie. She taps out a response to play along, remembering the Wookiee’s short lessons during downtime about the language.

 

_Hardwired: Can you deal the cards?_

 

You speak the cant?

 

_Voidwing: I know a fin when I see one._

 

Of course I understand.

 

_Hardwired: Doing some work for the neighbors. Taking cake out to the beach for a row of teeth._

 

I’m under First Order contract running some harmless cargo to Tatooine for a couple thousand credits.

 

_Voidstar: Got parts to spare? The storm did a number on our systems._

 

_Hardwired: I read you - got spare parts I could hook you up with, for a fee._

 

_Voidwing: Figured. Opening audio channel._

 

Rey opens the channel. “ _Hardwired_ to command shuttle,” she answers, trying to disguise the pitch of her voice by scrambling it with static.

 

Silence on the other end. Then Rey makes out the sound of a voice modulator crackling before her blood turns to ice.

 

“Rey.” Kylo Ren. In the middle of nowhere.

 

“ _Kriff_.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, yessss. Let me just throw down implications and double meanings everywhere in this bit. 
> 
>  
> 
> Headcanons hinted in this chapter:
> 
> -Ben learned the Smuggler's Cant at a young age from Han. It drove Leia up the wall because Ben and Han talked in doublespeak for a solid month whenever she walked into the room. Now he uses it to trick freighters and smugglers into a false sense of security before surprise search and seizure operations to root out Resistance scum since who the fuck knows a dark-sider that speaks the cant.
> 
> -Rey, starved of modern conveniences on Jakku, now owns a healthy hololibrary of everything from books to vids and horrible Zeltronian synth pop. She also takes longer showers than is necessary since water is no longer a necessity, but a luxury.
> 
>  
> 
> [Smuggler's Cant Source](http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=8359)
> 
> [Soresu quote source](http://www.jediholo.net/archives/documents/form-iii-soresu/)


	4. Form IV: Ataru

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story earns its explicit stripes in this chapter. You've been warned.

**Form IV: Ataru**

_“Also known as the Way of the Hawk-Bat or Aggression Form. Ataru...focuses primarily on the application of motion and kinetic energies to deal with an opponent, but also places considerable emphasis on the user possessing and using a tactical mind: each move is not random or uncoordinated, but rather part of a greater sequence designed to open an adversary’s defenses and to find a vulnerable spot or to create an opening through which the Ataru practitioner will then break through to successfully strike.”_

**“H** ardwired was a bit too obvious,” he critiques over the open channel. She can see his shuttle pulling up alongside the _Falcon_ , stabilizers ridiculously angular and long like drexl wings. Rey grits her teeth. Her forward cannons could do a bit of damage to him in this state. It would be easier if his shields were down.

A glance down at the readouts on the opposing ship show that he isn’t lying about the damage done by the storm. The shuttle has anterior carbon scoring near where the lifesupport systems on _Upsilon_ -class types are typically housed.

“Want to tell me about that?” she asks, pointing at the problem area in question. She knows he can see her.

“The storm caught me as I was making the jump. I was en route to coordinate with one of our capital ships in the Halori sector - then the advisory came across the ban.” She hears the annoyance in his voice.

“How much more oxygen do you have left?” she asks conversationally, as if she’s inquiring about the weather. Rey watches a steady stream of particles leak out of his lifesupport systems.

“Around two day’s worth,” he replies mildly.

“You’re awfully calm about this. How do I not know this isn’t some elaborate trick?”

“Search my mind. This is merely happenstance that _you_ and _I_ end up crossing paths like this again.” He’s far calmer about his situation than he had any right to be, considering how he was a year ago.

He’s changed - patricide aside.

Rey empties herself and reaches out, letting her mind skim over the surface of his own. It’s as passive as he gets, in her limited experience - only tinges of the dark reach for her. Malicious, but she can’t feel the strange, lurching feeling he possessed when they first fought and he was hellbent on breaking her will. She withdraws.

“Try and make up your mind before I asphyxiate over here,” he drones, managing to affect the tone of _boredom_ at the notion, even. But Rey can feel his pent frustration from clear across the distance between their ships.

“I’ll think about it.” She kills the channel connection and stares out the viewport at the red glaze of his ship’s visor-like cockpit. Rey can barely make out his outline.

\----

Kylo Ren eyes the slipping gauges on the _Voidwing’s_ lifesupport. He’s exhausted all other routes. It’s beyond repairs without the proper replacement components. Forcibly boarding the _Falcon_ like he originally intended would be overly messy in this current state. It’s a one-shot situation that might kill them both, and he needs alternatives. The girl’s compliance is key, and he’s depending on her strongly rooted _morals_ to save his skin in this situation.

\----

“It took me a while to realize why you were beating that wound where the bowcaster bolt hit you.”

“Jedi are rather dense. Your kind would probably ignore the pain and spend their focus elsewhere - wasteful.”

They’re having one of their _somewhat_ civil ship-to-ship chats on day two while she mulls over the choices of saving his life or letting him slowly suffocate. The message comes across the sector-wide channel that this electrical storm won’t let up for another three standard weeks from tomorrow.

She hears him sigh.

\----

Rey throws the switch to open the comm-channel between their ships on the beginning of day three, when his breathing becomes labored during their conversations and the readouts show subzero temps - more carbon monoxide than oxygen is circulating through his ship, and Rey doesn’t fancy hearing him fall unconscious in realtime or killing the audio link only to feel him slowly slip away through the Force. He wasn’t lying. She can feel the strain on his body already through whatever links them. Not even Ren deserves to go like this.

“Alright. Truce,” she says. A moment passes before she hears the dry chuckle answer her on the other end.

“And the Jedi succumbs and helps the one in need,” he rasps. She's already having second doubts. She hears the rustle of his robes as he stands, then the heavy tread of his steps after he fumbles with his controls. The _Voidwing_ edges closer to the _Falcon_.

She throws everything into idle, opening the docking ring as soon as the _Upsilon_ -class command shuttle engages with the _Falcon’s_ airlock. There’s a low hiss as everything decompresses, then the grating sound of the magnetic locks springing open then shut once he passes through, sealing off the failing environment in his ship from her thriving one.

Then she hears his boots on the durasteel of the floor panels. It raises the hairs on the back of her neck. Bad idea. Very bad idea. She forces herself up from the pilot’s chair and starts towards the winding corridor to the main hold. The footsteps get louder, bouncing off the insulation the further in she goes. Rey grips the hilt of her saber and ignites it when he rounds the corner. He’s a hair quicker than her, the jagged beam of his saber hovering somewhere near her ear while hers finds a spot near his neck.

The smell of burning hair fills her nose. They hold the position for a moment - her eyes search the surface of his mask while he angles it down at her, observing her through his visor. Rey is the first one to kill the beam to her saber, then Ren after a moment’s pause.

“Truce, remember?” he reminds her. He taps his saber to the wide span of the belt that cinches his waist, clipping it back in place. She mirrors the gesture after stepping out of striking range.

\----

Week one passes by in fashion much like walking on eggshells. They circle each other like manka cats, reluctant to share the meager space the _Falcon_ provides. It’s not the largest ship, nor the one outfitted with the most up-to-date conveniences. He gets a cot in the engineering bay where the hyperdrive and the sublight engines hum since she isn’t going to bicker with him for the crew quarters where she sleeps. And it has its own blastdoors that stand a _remote_  chance against his saber in-case she needs to lock him in.

She makes sure to stick to the cockpit whenever he’s doing something remotely human, like showering or eating. Rey has a hard time linking these normal behaviors to a being like Ren.

\----

When she catches him without his mask on for the first time, she takes a sharp inhale. Rey thought he’d have it sealed with kolto or new skin grafted on to hide it.

“A good souvenir. Wouldn’t you say it makes me look more interesting? Dashing, maybe?” he baits her, pointing a gloved finger at the angry scar that nearly bisects a side of his face. Rey exhales.

\----

Rey learns the ground rules for sharing a living space with Kylo Ren for the next three weeks. Goading him into a shouting match about the wrongs and rights of the galaxy make both of their powers fluctuate so violently that the ship creaks and groans around them. They decide to leave the conversations about his actions, his parentage, his past, and his current work for a time when dueling won’t result in mutually assured destruction by ripping a saber-hole in the ship’s hull. Likewise on all points for her as well.

And calling him _Ben_ is certainly off the table unless she values her ability to breathe.

\----

“NO, _lift_!” he shouts from the galley table. Ren is lounging around in his robes again and she hasn’t seen him with the mask on in nearly three days. The scar doesn’t offset her nearly as bad and he’s gotten into the annoying habit of supervising her exercises.

“I _am_ lifting, you prat,” she hisses out, sweating rivers as she tries to keep the five cargo canisters aloft through the Force.

He starts exercising in the secondary hold with her the day after. She had no notion muscle like that existed under the folds of his robe, once he stripped it off to show the plain black flightsuit beneath.

\----

By the end of week one, he’s succumbing to the strain of keeping his guard up around her. He decides she’s too damn  _noble_ to kill him when his back is turned. He never lets his saber go out of arm’s reach, though. She does the same. _Wise move._

\----

He’s wearing only his boots, trousers, and a tunic when she stumbles out of bed the morning of day thirteen. Her holopad is open on his lap - readouts of one of _her_ engine concepts - and the entire pot of caf is on his side of the table. His smug expression at her blank look of confusion deserves a blaster bolt to the face. She takes the caf _and_ her pad with a serene 'ah-hah' and stalks up the main corridor to the cockpit to evolve into a functioning human in relative peace.

\----

“It’s not pretty, but it will last you the day you need after the storm dies down to get to the nearest destroyer or a port that won’t have you shot on sight.” Rey hands off the hydrospanner to him. His ship took an entire day to pressurize to the _Falcon’s_ atmosphere so they could come aboard for repairs. She’s ready to get back over and seal back up, their systems straining from supporting double the capacity in oxygen.

They’re crowded too close together in the maintenance shaft of his shuttle and _filthy_ with grease. It’s taken two days straight of work and both of them reek of sweat and oil. He’d make a half-decent mechanic if he gave up the galactic domination track he was currently bent on.

Kylo crouches down, adjusting some wiring on the oxygenator. He shoves his unruly hair out of his eyes, the ends sticking up as grease smears his brow. Rey has to concede the fact that he’s not wholly unattractive.

\----

“Y’know, I’ve noticed that your hands and ears are ridiculously large,” she comments with no small measure of amusement over the midday meal. Rey leans up against the galley counter, far out of saber-reach. Kylo scowls down at his hands, flexing the long, articulated bends of his thumbs. Then he actually  _smiles._

“High praise from an underfed runt.”

Rey flicks her wrist, his bowl of porridge smattering into his lap. This leads to a ten minute standoff where he holds her holopad hostage over the toilet in the ‘fresher, threatening to space it until she makes an apology for lack of tact.

\----

He’s toweling his hair dry and coming out of the crew quarters when she is crossing the main hold to get her holopad from the bunk. Rey catches an unsettling sight when his tunic rides up and his pants sling lower with his long strides.

A dark dusting of hair trails from navel to waistband and she can make out the ridges of abdominals that divot into a sharp vee at his waist. His skin has the tinge of not having seen sunlight for years, but looks vaguely tan. Rey has to veer completely off course, out of sight, and stand with her forehead and arms braced against the cooling plastoid panelling of the hyperdrive, taking shallow, meditative breaths for a good ten minutes before she can retrieve her things.

She pretends not to notice him watching her every move from where he’s leaned up against the galley with a cup of caf in hand.

\----

She’s braiding her hair with her back to him, stupid girl. The action itself exposes the vulnerable bumps of vertebrae in her long neck just at the nape before it veers down to where the thin fabric of a ratty old tunic starts mid-spine. Kylo stares a hole through her skin and tries his hardest to ignore the fact that even that mild stretch of flesh is enough to make his throat run dry and his cock twitch.

Unfairly intelligent and talented. Stubborn. Beautiful.

She’d be a Sith to rival all the lords of the past if she’d only just _bend_.

One more week.

\----

“Wrong. The _Inflictor_ had a complement of about sixty or seventy TIE or LN starfighters at any given time. Only half were still in the bay when she was scuttled on Jakku.” Rey has turned on the projector in the main hold to let an Imperial documentary based on the war after the Battle of Endor play out. It’s background noise while she beats Kylo at pazaak.

“Your firsthand account of her contradicts just about everything Hux listed as the primary failures of that ship when he presented his thesis at the naval academy.”

Rey could be imagining things, but he sounds downright pleased about that.

\----

It happens the night before the storm is due to let up, of course. Rey is in the pilot’s seat plugging in flight algorithms.

“Last night, scavenger. I’m going to eat your dinner portion if you’re not out of that seat in the next five seconds,” Kylo taunts after ducking into the cockpit. He avoids this part of the ship, normally. She’s caught him twice in here with his arms crossed, staring fixedly at the chair where Han used to sit.

Rey sighs, long suffering, and stands to stretch out the kinks in her back before following him out.

\----

The urge hits her as they’re rounding the corner before the main hold comes into view. She reaches out and puts a hand on his arm, because tonight might be her last chance at finding whoever he is under all _this_. The contact is the first time they’ve been skin to skin - the shock is heavy when he floods into her, but she tamps down on it. Now she only feels the surface of his emotions, the bare bones of them that aren’t as invasive.

Kylo starts, then looks and _feels_ downright uncomfortable at the touch. He reaches out, gripping her by the shoulders to space them apart. His hands swallow her like this. Heat fluxes and her mouth runs just shy of dry as she looks up at him, trying to formulate a response that isn’t total bantha fodder as to _why_ she did that.

He smooths a thumb over the bottom of her mouth, his expression clouded and more unreadable than ever. He’s learned to shutter his emotions. She parts her mouth to say _sorry_ , but he seems to make up his mind - his head ducks, bending hers back, their mouths catch - _oh_. The fire threatens to burn her heart out.

\----

They bodies bang into every surface on their way to the crew bunks, Force sensitivity notwithstanding. He can’t quite seem to make up his mind as to where his hands need to go - to be honest, they’re about as graceful as a pair of rontos at this moment. The tension has been burning since they met, only she hasn’t known this _ache_ until now. One shove to this wall by her, then he’s crowding her into a corner of the galley and kissing her into lucid stupidity - suddenly the tables flip and she’s pushing him with no small amount of Force into her bunk.

He bangs his head in the process and she laughs until her sides ache. Kylo stops her with a firm yank at her wrist, drawing her into the dark of the bunk. She remembers to duck in time, but she ends up sprawled over his lap as they angle themselves awkwardly into the narrow space. This isn’t made for two. It’s barely made for one, much less someone as long and lean as him.

\----

\--finally, _finally_ her hair comes undone under his fingers from the complicated mess she wears it in, covering them like a shroud. His senses are swamped by that sunlight scent that his brain is only starting to parse out as some kind of spice. It’s strongest in the hollow of her throat. He chases it with his mouth, sucking a bruise just below her ear.

Rey makes the softest _oh_ he has ever heard.

\----

“And here I thought Jedi were sworn off physical relations,” he grunt out after she nearly knocks the wind from him with a jab to his solar plexus, fumbling with the straps of his belt. The hilt of his saber falls into her hands, and she really shouldn’t want to ignite this thing just to feel how badly the kyber crystal beam shakes her grip on it, should she?

And he has the nerve to needle her _now_?

She feels him reach for her saber and doesn’t panic.

\----

“Jedi _did_ do this and probably will keep doing this, barring extinction by your kind,” she grits out, yanking none-too-gently on his belt.

He’s scrambling to get her saber off, the feeling electric as he lays his hands on that weapon carried by grandfather during the Clone Wars - the one that Kenobi passed on to his uncle before it was lost. The saber that should by all rights be his, yet it feels _wrong_ in his grip. It knows her hands too well, now.

Both their sabers drop to the floor - she’s on him again, her mouth prying his open to lick into him. Rey kisses without control, as if she’s starving. He can’t help but respond in kind. The first straining lines of the Sith code come to mind.

Does she have any idea what she’s _doing_ to herself?

\----

“What are you on about, Ren?” she asks, a touch of nerves making her voice shrill. Her mouth is swollen after nearly half an hour of kissing, hair disheveled.

He wants to push her into the mattress and fuck like the last hour has been leading up to - fondling each other like teenagers and nearly rutting through their clothes in the bunk. She barely is into her twenties, though, and the thought makes his stomach jerk into a knot. He can say with certainty that she can palm him through his clothing until he can barely string a coherent thought together, hard and leaking as his cock is right this second.

“Kylo,” he corrects her automatically, because Ren sounds too close to _Ben_ when she slurs it like that. “And if you’d stay _still_ you’ll find out,” he promises, running the backs of his hands from the end of her shoulder blades, down, _down_ to grip the curve of her ass. He can feel her pulse thrumming, a flush of color chasing down her neck into her tunic. His hands lift, catching on the hem of her shirt until it comes off with her breast-band. The flush goes to the dusky tips of her breasts, staining the skin pink. He takes one tightly beaded nipple into his mouth and _sucks_. 

\----

Rey hates to admit that the man has a gift. Her toes nearly crack as they curl inwards and she bites the flesh of her palm raw in an effort to keep quiet. He plays with her breasts for an astonishing amount of time. She can’t move without feeling the slick of her underwear clinging at the crotch of the garment, so wet it sticks to her skin everytime she shifts. Her pants and boots are shucked off and he sends her sprawling over his face with a push of the Force to the back of her neck.

Rey isn't sure that follows the code, per say. None of this does.

\----

Her knees weaken by his ears, her breath draws short - handfuls of his hair might as well be reins as hard as she is gripping, hunched over in the bunk. It’s the least comfortable way to do this but the taste is the closest thing he can imagine drowning himself in once he peels the fabric down her legs and gets his mouth on her.

\----

Rey isn’t sure how long she lasts. It could’ve been _hours_ or mere minutes of him between her legs with her cunt spread open by his fingers, curling into her with his tongue and mouth constantly mapping out the folds and the spaces between her thighs. His nose tickles the strip of sparse hair above her pubis, digging in when he start in earnest.

When she feels his fingers fill her and the ache abates, she bears down. His arm comes across to weigh down like a ballast weight on her thighs. His tongue flicks on the tip of her clit that peeks out and Rey _shatters_.

\----

The lips of her labia are the same shade of red as her mouth, overworked and swollen. He smooths his hands over her thighs as they shake, aftershocks sending ripples through her body. The Force. Finally, as if she’s moving underwater, she slinks her knees back over his shoulders to his sides, skimming down his body to straddle his hips and set herself straight _on_ him, damn it. He already feels how wet she is through the fabric of his pants and his head starts to spin.

\----

He bucks against her, the thin layer of cloth the only thing keeping her from reaching down to guide him in. They scramble, nearly falling out of the bunk until she’s pressed tight under his bulk. She scrapes his shirt off and he _does_ have a faint tan beneath all that black, nails chasing over scars from her and others she can't place from their fight. His shoulders are almost too broad for his body and she feels swallowed by him when he bears down on her.

Rey hitches her hips against his, tilting her tailbone back into the mattress while her bare feet skim up his legs. They don’t seem to have an _end_. She has to contort to hitch her toes into the waistband of his pants, shoving them down. He’s lain out against her stomach, hot and heavy and she did _not_ think this through thoroughly.

There’s the contraceptive and immuno-implant she had a med-droid on D’Qar inject into her arm to consider. Kylo pants into her mouth, circling her arm with his hands and skimming up until he feels it before she mirrors the gesture, feeling the ridge of the tiny chip just below his deltoids. It’s a gesture she knows most couples in the known galaxy that are by any means _normal_ check for.

If Rey shuts her eyes a little while longer, she can pretend that this is exactly what this is. She’s in an apartment on Kuat or Corellia, Kylo is some dark stranger her braver self has picked up in a cantina, there’s no war and they can simply have sex without a _million_ consequences hinging on the act itself.

So Rey pretends that this isn’t already crossing a line and takes him in hand. He doesn’t object to this route. The expression on his face is nearly one of awe when she spits into her hand and spans her fingers around the base of him, stroking up. She finds a rhythm from somewhere, her nails dragging up his thigh to squeeze his sac. She feels every inch of him fighting above her - he grabs her wrist to pause the slide of her hand, gritting his teeth and forcing his breathing into normalcy.

Soon he’s pulling her hair, forcing her body to arch into his like the curve of a spanner. He’s fighting to keep quiet, but he’s already so _loud_. His breathing, the moans he fights to keep in. She knocks him back and starts over.

\----

He can't last like this. Rey is fire on his mouth as she straddles his thighs with her small hands fisted around his cock, pressing him into the bunk he used to sleep in as a teen when his father finally let him come on smuggling runs. Her lips trace the bowcaster bolt scar on his torso, working upwards to take a nipple between her teeth and _suck_. He imagines what it would feel like to watch her sink onto him, bracing her forearm against the too-low bulkhead while working her bottom lip between sharp, neat teeth.

The thought sends him over the edge, and he spills all over Rey’s rough hands and warm thighs. She swallows the sounds he makes with her mouth on his - he won’t dignify identifying it as a whimper but it is _damn_ close, choked as it is. Come is dripping off her fingertips when she presses him back into the bunk, hands on his stomach.

He flushes when she starts to chuckle, the sound crescendoing into full throated laughing. She collapses against his chest and hides her face in her crossed arms.

“You’re ruining the moment,” he manages after it feels like a ronto isn’t trying to cave in his chest. She doesn’t make a move to dismount quite yet. He doesn’t reach for her, simply laying prone while feeling resumes in his extremities and the dryness in his mouth abates.

“I’m just thinking--” she manages, her hot breath fanning across his chest, “that this is probably the first time a dark-sider and a light-sider have done this in _decades_.”

She can’t see the smile he cracks at that.

\----

The notion that he has to leave _her_ and _this_ behind tomorrow unsettles him. A thousand ways to convince, capture, seduce, coerce, abduct, and otherwise abscond with Rey come to mind, but all of those scenarios stand to break the fragile trust he’s managed to thread between them so far.

It can wait. He can wait. _Patience_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really have no comment, other than I'm using the word 'fuck' liberally when it TECHNICALLY doesn't show up in the canon 'verse to my knowledge and who am I kidding this is fanfiction and I need a church bye.
> 
>  
> 
> [Ataru quote source](http://www.jediholo.net/archives/documents/5341-2/)


	5. Form V: Shien

**Form V - Shien**

 

_“Also known as the Way of the Krayt Dragon or Perseverance Form. Shien is known as the antiquated form of Djem-So, the modern Form V. It, much like Form VII, is actually comprised of two different forms that have a very similar focus, but place a slightly different emphasis. The original Form V, Shien, was designed primarily to deal with blaster fire and that of ranged weapons...”_

 

 **A** faint tickling feeling around his nose wakes him. For a moment he forgets where he is, then the prior night comes flooding back to him and nearly freezes his body stiff. Rey’s cloud of hair is spread across his face, her body tucked into the lee of his own as they both lie curled around each other on their sides. His nose is buried deep in it. He’s halfway disgusted with himself, twining around her like a child.

 

He didn’t want to open his mouth and admit last night was the first time he’s gone beyond anything but the juvenile tussling and kissing from his teenage years before Skywalker took him in. That would make it mean something between them. But it _does_ mean something already. He doesn’t want to get up. 

 

Rey tucks her legs higher against the bulkhead he has her wedged against, her breathing slow and even. The soft, smooth glide of skin on skin as her thigh slides against his stiffening length makes him nearly bite through his lip to keep from sighing. His throat constricts at the thought of fitting his hand between her thighs to feel how wet and tender she might still be, working her awake that way. He has to get out of this bed before all the sense in his head rushes towards his cock, which is well on its way to dictating his actions.

 

By some small miracle he manages to untangle himself from her limbs without waking her, working his jaw as his body protests at the indignity of having to leave a warm bed and Rey’s even warmer body for the chilling, recycled air of the ship. 

 

Space is painfully cold.

 

He dresses with a speed he didn’t know he even had.

 

\----

 

The chrono starts shrieking around the 0500 hour. 

 

It explodes in a rain of sparks and metal when Rey reaches out and makes a fist at it with her hand, crumpling it from where she lays. 

 

A calm, cool voice comes over the sector ban she has cranked up over the ship’s intercom, interrupting the peace that follows the painful end of her chrono.

 

“All craft be advised - conditions are now nominal for travel via the Vaathkree Trade Corridor in the Prackla sector. Proceed with caution during the jump to lightspeed as traffic conditions may be heavier than usual.”

 

Rey gropes to her left, feeling the cool sheets without opening her eyes to look. Of course, the bed is empty. She didn’t expect him to stay. 

 

The only thing left of him is a faint hint of musk and some darker, smokey scent clinging to her pillow. She turns to bury her face further in, knowing that the smell of it will fade into a sensory memory by next week.

 

Rey feels an ache in her chest that is dangerous.

 

\----

 

She arrives on Ord Mantell at Alpha Base in record time. Finn and Poe rush her as she’s disembarking, nearly knocking the wind out of her as they squeeze her into a multi-armed, tight embrace. The general follows them at a more sedate pace with the droids. She looks far better than when Rey last saw her a few months back, when she’d first returned to the Resistance after leaving Master Luke.

 

They’re all healing in small steps.

 

\----

 

“The new host planet for the current sitting senate has rotated back to Coruscant, seeing as no one wants to risk holding it on Chandrila this session. The First Order wouldn’t risk destroying Coruscant, seeing as that’s the capital they have in mind to restore what they perceive as the old order of things during the Galactic Empire,” Leia’s voice rings out through the hanger. Only the essential personnel and advisors are present. Apparently Rey, Poe, and Finn qualify as the former or the latter since they’re front and center to the action. Finn’s now a lieutenant and doing more than fine with a tight-knit firesquad of his own. Poe is still the Rapier Squadron wing commander and ace of the Resistance. And as the saying goes, where you find Poe, you find Finn. 

 

“It’s their lynchpin to getting more systems behind their movement. The minute they maximize the potential of their navy and ground forces is the minute we stand a chance to lose the core worlds and by that extension Coruscant. We need to starve them of all resources if at all possible. We’ll hit them in the shipwright sector first - Kuat and Corellia are already in negotiations with representatives of the First Order for mass production of more star destroyers - we've received intelligence that they are trying to come up with the resources for another _super_ star destroyer to spearhead the fleet." That sends everyone into whispers. Leia's voice silences them as she starts again.

 

“Mon Mothma has taken up her old post as chancellor until the next elections can be held to vote on a new one, seeing as the last one and a third of the sitting senate were on Hosnian Prime when the weapon fired on that star system. I’ll be taking a backseat to directing combat operations and releasing most of my authority in that area to Admiral Akbar,” she motions to the Mon Calamari, who inclines his head. Already the room is breaking out in a flurry of speculative murmurs and disgruntled protests. What Leia says next drops like a missile. 

 

“I’ll be reprising my role as an advisor to the chancellor and mediating negotiations between Kuat and Corellia.”

 

\----

 

“I take it you’re not finishing training with Luke anytime in the near future,” Leia asks her, taking a seat on the cargo canisters near the makeshift Grav-ball fields outside of Alpha Base. Rey is fixing the wiring on Poe’s blaster since his shots have been pulling wide to the left after his spectacular crash on Jarnollen. 

 

“Not until I straighten out what I want in my head. I don’t think I’m cut out to be a Jedi, exactly,” she mutters, abashed. She solders on the wiring to a conductor panel, the sparks pinging off the tips of her gloved fingers. Leia lets her work in silence for awhile, watching the pilots and ground troops play against one another. Poe is leading his squad against Finn’s - Poe is winning, from how the volume on his trash talking is gradually pitching upwards.

 

“How about you take a break from the piloting and the operative missions and come with me to Coruscant?” the general asks, turning the conversation on its head.

 

“ _Me_?” Rey asks, just a shade short of stupefied. She’s a desert scavenger with no family name to claim and isn’t sure she even _wants_ to go down the path everyone seems to be urging her towards. Become the second to last of a dying order. _To what end_ , she thinks.

 

“I haven’t had anyone else jump at the chance, or seen anyone that might have what it takes. You think those two would willingly sit in the senate or understand the dynamics between the New Republic and the First Order? How to win a war without firing a single shot? Even follow what is going on?” The general motions towards the field at the two others considered the rising heroes of the Resistance.

 

Poe and Finn are now wrangling over the ball midfield. Finn ducks Poe’s attempt to check him, upending the pilot on the grass behind him, and kicks the ball nearly across the field. It whistles through the hovering rings that make up the goal. She can hear Finn hollering from here and can’t help the grin that nearly cracks her face. Leia smiles. 

 

“I wouldn’t sell either of them short, general. They’re pretty smart, when they’re not trying to be big heroes in the field.”

 

“What I’m saying is that they’re warriors, like you. But _you_ might turn out to be a half-way decent diplomat with a bit of training. Jedi are peacemakers, first and foremost. You need to see the act up close to get an idea of what _being_ one might entail - the good you could do,” the general explains, rummaging in her coat pocket before drawing out a knife and a round, red fruit of some sort. Leia cuts a slice for her. Rey takes it, popping the piece into her mouth before crunching down on the soft flesh.

 

“I’ll think about it.”

 

\----

 

By think about it, she means _yes_. Finn and Poe make her swear on the s-foils of Poe’s X-wing that she’ll be back after the negotiations conclude and/or she gives up on trying to become a proper diplomat. The general and her disembark from the transport onto the landing pad the following month and Coruscant is _sprawling_ , dizzying in how teeming it is with life. She spends half the speeder ride to the Senate District with her face pressed to the glass, marveling at how a city can cover an entire planet.

 

The Senate Apartment Complex has the Alderaanian embassy suite prepared for Leia’s arrival, as she is the only surviving member of the royal family and seen as the leader of the some-odd ten thousand Alderaanians that weren’t planet-side when the blast hit. 

 

Rey pauses over a vase of gingerbells in her cursory tour through the apartment, stroking the puffs of pink petals as they give off their sweet scent. Leia is delegating the unpacking with Artoo and Threepio in the sitting room when she makes her way back to where she started.

 

“Think this’ll suit?” By how Leia is smiling, Rey must be showing every last emotion on her face this instant. 

 

“I might need a _map_ ,” Rey exclaims, flopping down on one of the many couches. 

 

She can't quite believe she gets an entire room to herself.

 

\----

 

“There’s a time for sheer shrewdness and there’s a time to make your clothes speak for you,” Leia advises one day as they’re out and about in the Luxury District. Rey is loaded down with a new wardrobe for the more formal occasions that she’ll be involved with. 

 

She feels ashamed that Leia is buying all of this for her - scraps of fabric that serve no real use except to show off status and fit only certain occasions. But she can’t help but feel like a completely different person when she slips on the first long gown of cyrene silk so dark and fine that it shimmers like a nova when she twists. 

 

Another outfit - more in the vein of casual-wear with fabric the color of sand and a hood - has draping that reminds her of _his_ robes. She buys it on the pretense that it hides where she keeps her saber belted to her side better than the other fripperies on offer.

 

\----

 

Part of her hates the politics behind running a government, she discovers. The bitter compromises, the underhanded dealings. Rey feels as out of place as tits on a womp rat. It makes her palms itch. She tries to emulate the general and wear her gowns like a coat of armor with her saber tucked into a fold. Surprisingly, it starts to work.

 

\----

 

Rey is walking the long arcade that spans one upper floor of the senate building when she runs into the Mandalorian delegation. She recognizes them by the armor and their vapor-locked expressions ever present when they have their helmets off during senate sessions. 

 

They’re not especially friendly to her. The fact that she’s allegedly the living resurgence of the order they have distrusted for thousands of years is off-putting, she supposes. More than once she’ll catch the murmurs of _jetti_ passed between them when she’s near. Rey doesn’t know if she should be offended, flattered, or cautious. Maybe approach it with a mix.

 

One of them is a tall girl her age with clever eyes and a warrior’s build. She walks in their heavy _beskar_ armor like it’s a second skin. They get stuck on the lift alone one day and make eye contact. 

 

“Mirta Gev,” the girl finally introduces herself after Rey’s halting questions about the Mandalorian’s pair of KYD-21 blaster pistols turns into a genuine conversation on their way to the senate floor. They shake hands before parting. Mirta has a grip like iron.

 

\----

 

“So after that thermal incineration incident with the Orade guy, my _ba’buir_ sits me down and says that I really, _really_ have to get the kriff out of his house and go do something productive,” the Mandalorian scoffs, as if she isn’t anything _but_ productive. They’re in some cantina in the lower wards, sipping ale while a boloball game plays loudly on about five screens. It’s packed and no one can hear them speak. Rey tries to drown out the sounds rippling through the Force. It’s like sinking into a mob.

 

“So he calls in Shysa and next thing I know, gramps is putting me on a ship to Mandalore and telling me to not come back until I’ve _pissed the fire out of me_ \- his words, I swear to you,” she nearly chokes as Rey spews ale out of her nose. “And that’s how I got off the _paradise_ that is Concord Dawn and came with this whole diplomatic envoy to hear out the militarization proposals with your people. Work is work, and the _Mand’alor_ says there is no way any _vod_ worth their salt is going to throw in their lot with the First Order,” Mirta’s accent is heaviest on the Mando’a phrases she tangles into her sentences. 

 

Rey can keep up as parts of the language existed in a mangled form on Jakku, especially when bounty hunters came looking for marks who thought hiding on a backwater was the best way to avoid the fee on their heads.

 

\----

 

Rey gets drunk for the first time that night. Mirta introduces her to the triple distilled, laser-fine firewater that is _tihaar_ \- pilfered from her grandfather’s stores before she left Concord Dawn. 

 

They spend the evening in the Industrial District passing the bottle between them, legs dangling between the railing on a support strut as the city gleams beneath. 

 

“You should try signing on with the engineering corps,” Mirta manages to slur out after Rey rambles without pausing about the difference between a class one and a class four hyperdrive for nearly half an hour.

 

It doesn’t sound like a bad idea, actually. 

 

\----

 

The apartment is dark when she stumbles in. The general is off-world dealing with Resistance business and she has the place to herself. The pounding in her head is already making her regret her first encounter with hard liquor. Rey nearly beats her shins black and blue as she stumbles into just about every low lying table in the apartment. 

 

Leia takes the droids with her whenever she goes off-world. Rey is grateful because it means less tiptoeing around to avoid probing questions from a very loud, glaringly obvious Threepio at four in the morning. 

 

Finally, _finally_  she makes it to the ‘fresher. The bathroom is the size of her old bolthole back on Jakku. It’s a mix of marble and steel with a grate inset in the ceiling over the shower stall that makes water fall like sheets of rain over her. She strips out of her senate gown and leaves it hanging in her closet for cleaning, padding across the cold marble to huddle in the stall. It’s freezing until she taps the panel, casting the room in a soft light as the hot water starts to bead from the ceiling and fall in heavy sheets onto her head.

 

Rey groans, sliding her mind open like a door when she finally feels him reach out. It’s the first time she’s opened herself since the _thing_ happened in the Prackla sector on the _Falcon_. And there he is, waiting. Ready.

 

 _Rey._ Kylo is firmly in her head. The link is only getting stronger if solid thoughts can project like this. Not abating with time, as Luke theorized. 

 

Rey dips her glance down at her body, hot water sluicing down between her thighs to curl down to her ankles. She can feel Kylo’s hands flex around the arms of whatever chair he’s sitting in.

 

 _I think this is the wrong time to talk_ , she projects back once she clearly visualizes what is on his end of the link. He’s covered in his usual attire and armor. Hux is opposite him and the table is thronged with many uniformed officers of varying ranks. She spots two that look out of place in outfits and masks that aren’t dissimilar from Kylo’s own. Ah, the Knights of Ren.  

 

Rey draws out of his mind but holds the link before neatly snipping it as soon as the sensation of her hand slipping between her legs resonates through the link.

 

She’s a bit sore towards him, to be honest.

 

So she laces a fantasy together in her mind, mindful of Master Luke’s warnings about what giving into temptations does to her. She’s past caring at this point as the damage is thoroughly kriffed and _done with_  as of the incident two months ago. Rey slides her thumb against her clit and sinks.

 

\----

 

When she does make herself come, she throws open her mind again because she is petty. It’s flooded with Rey gasping a name that sounds dangerously close to _Ben_ as he braces behind her, curved over her bent back and spilling deep in her.

 

\----

 

It is well known among the First Order elite that Kylo Ren has a temper. An analyst is rambling about the decrease in trade along the Inner Rim alliances when he notices Lord Ren has twisted up part of his chair’s armrest in a shaking grip. No one else at the table seems to notice. The analyst starts to sweat and speeds up his speech.

 

\----

 

She spends time walking the lower wards, where she feels most at home with the junkers and laborers. Rey finds an old cafe in CoCo Town near the factories and starts showing up every fifth night of the week.

 

Leia joins her one evening and looks more than a bit nostalgically around at the worn countertops and serving droids.

 

“Used to come here a lot?” Rey asks over a bowl of spicy Tionese fish stew.

 

“Ben did,” Leia answers, hunching over her cup of caf as she rubs her temples. 

 

Rey wonders when her feet are going to stop walking the same routes that he did. It’s a subconscious pull, these places, and she can’t help but follow his lead.

 

\----

 

“They’re sending a diplomatic envoy to negotiate new treaty terms,” Mon Mothma announces in her private office to Leia and her other trusted staff members. Rey nearly starts out of her seat.

 

“New terms? They blew up an entire system. What _treaty_ are they on about?” barks a long-faced Bothan. Nek Bwua’tu, Chief of Naval Operations. Then the talk turns to thoughts of opportunities about what leverage they can gain out of detaining this diplomatic attache. Rey’s stomach flips when the Echani senator suggests an execution as retaliation for the lives lost in the Hosnian system. 

 

“We’re not going to detain them, try them, and _execute_ them when they’re coming under the assumption of engaging in peace talks,” Senator Jamillia from Naboo’s tone leaves no room for further discussion on that idea. Besides being her and Leia’s upstairs neighbor, the former queen dominates the senate as a woman that cuts quickly to every point. Her round, painted face is pointed directly at Chief Bwua’tu, the red slash of her mouth pursing into a frown. 

 

When Leia and Rey are alone in the turbolift later, the younger woman voices her opinion.

 

“They’d do exactly that if it was _us_ coming to them.”

 

“We’re not _them_ , Rey,” Leia emphasizes with so much patience. She’s more like her brother than she knows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY HOLIDAYS, EVERYONE. HAVE MORE TRASH WITH TRASH REFERENCES. Below are a couple of links to characters and inspirations in this chapter. Every character presented is either part of the canon or 'legend' 'verse, since the EU has a huge cast of characters to throw into this new mix and I really can't resist. 
> 
> Also, the story has evolved and I'm now shooting for a total of eleven chapters (epilogue included) instead of eight. 
> 
>  
> 
> [Rey's Senate Gown](http://attackoftheclothes.tumblr.com/post/134309961853/evening-gown-for-rey-tadashi-shoji-fall-2015)
> 
> [Rey's Everyday Wear](http://starwarstyle.tumblr.com/post/117564440924/starwarstyle-ralph-lauren-x-what-to-wear-on)
> 
> [Mirta Gev](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mirta_Gev)
> 
> [Mon Mothma](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mon_Mothma)
> 
> [Queen Jamillia](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Jamillia/Legends)
> 
> [Shien quote source](http://www.jediholo.net/archives/documents/form-v-djem-so/)


	6. Form V: Djem-So

**Form V - Djem-So**

 

_“The modern form V, also known as the Way of the Krayt Dragon or Perseverance Form. The Form itself is among the most aggressive of the traditional seven lightsaber forms, focusing on all-out attack in the same way that Soresu preaches all-out defense. A common notion among Djem-So practitioners is that victory is best achieved with superior firepower and, as such, Djem-So is not designed to be a subtle form, but instead uses primal fears, intimidation and pure aggressive intent and motion to dominate an opponent – it is also for this reason that the Form is so often used among Dark Jedi and Sith, as well as their Jedi counterparts.”_

 

 **S** noke racks through his thoughts and memories from the _Falcon_ for nearly two days after his extended absence without pause. Kylo is left weak-stomached and gasping on the cold floor of his lord’s audience chamber by the end of it, his mind raw.

 

“This is well done of you, my young apprentice. The girl sinks further into the dark side with each passing touch you score on her - already I can feel it pooling within her. A lonely creature, isolated despite those surrounding her. _Just like you were_ ,” Snoke notes with a pleased air.

 

Kylo curls his fingers against the floor.

 

“She will quell your rage into a deadly focus, my young apprentice. I’ve heard of such matches from the Sith empires of old. Either you will master her or she will strike you down to take your place at my side, if she turns.”

 

Finally, his lord gives the command. “We'll construct some ruse. Send you to accompany a peace-keeping envoy to Coruscant. Bring her back, Ren. With or without her say.” 

 

Kylo Ren realizes that Snoke didn’t see what happened in its entirety, despite his efforts to extract everything from him. He can only see the doctored, distorted lies of Ren dominating Rey instead of the true nature of what transpired between them on the _Falcon_. 

 

For the first time in his life, he feels a power he didn’t know he had.

 

\----

 

His grandfather speaks to him for the first time in years. It’s not pitched in the deep, modular voice of Vader. It’s even rarer, a voice he hasn’t heard since boyhood - Anakin Skywalker. 

 

 _You hold her in your heart like I did your grandmother, Ben - let her in_ , he slides in without warning, startling Kylo off of his cot. The blue haze of a force ghost fills a corner of the room, guttering before vanishing entirely. He doesn’t sleep for the remainder of the night cycle.

 

\----  

 

Another day, another meeting aboard the _Finalizer_. Kylo Ren arrives with two other brothers from his order to a gathering that is already well under way. The conference room sits just above the bridge and has a one-way view to the operations below, many uniformed officers scurrying through the terminal banks like ants.

 

Like last time, this meeting is populated with all the greatest names from the military and political castes of the First Order. At the head of the table is Hux - beside him sits his coterie of yes-men and boot lickers. Opposite that younger group sits what you could call the Old Guard of their organization, overwhelmingly wise and predominately female.

 

Admiral Natasi Daala has her eyes narrowed in on Hux from where she’s seated at the opposite end of the table. Her hair is a touch more silver than when Kylo last saw her. Beside her is Moff Ciena Ree, assumed dead for many years when the Battle of Jakku forced her to scuttle the _Inflictor_ and become a prisoner of war under the New Republic. 

 

They traded over fifty imprisoned Resistance operatives for her a few years ago in an exchange. Twenty years in captivity and she never once broke under questioning. Patriotism like that makes Kylo wonder what kept her so loyal to the old empire. Her dark skin is just a few shades lighter than the black of her uniform, the tunic nearly sagging with the amount of decor pinned to her breast. 

 

“Look who’s not dead,” Daala greets him once he takes the seat to her right. Ree flicks her fingers up in a casual salute.

 

Both were personally acquainted with his grandfather. Ree herself served in Death Squadron. He couldn’t help but feel a thread of connection with the women. They, likewise, act with less formality around him than they do with other members of the Knights of Ren. Daala’s flagship was his first assignment after Snoke declared him fit to start operating as an independent knight of the Order.

 

“Still avoiding retirement, I see,” he mutters at her, low enough for only Daala and Ree to hear. Ren takes a seat, noting that his chair’s arm has been repaired. He keenly remembers Rey’s antics that caused the damage and shoves them out of his mind. 

 

“You’re a headache - anyone ever tell you that, Ren?” Daala says with the faintest touch of fondness. They turn their heads to the meeting. A verbal squabble starts between Hux and the moff over logistics.

 

\----

 

The debate escalates into an all-out verbal skirmish between Daala and Hux.

 

“No. We’re doing it _my_ way, as first suggested before you railroaded the Supreme Leader into your idea, Hux. Superweapons the size of planets and moons are lumbering, _weak_ toys compared to the power of a fully operational navy - I’d have thought that the previous two failures would’ve stopped the construction of Starkiller Base, but _no_. It gets built to shut up your incessant whining about the opportunity to destroy the seat of the New Republic’s senate, and you don’t even manage to _scratch_ their infrastructure because they simply regroup and build an entirely new government on a planet _we can’t incinerate_. I’ve been in contact with the KDY and they estimate the completion of the main project to be achieved sometime within the next month,” she finishes. 

 

“I won’t be lectured by some out-dated fossil who achieved her rank by the mere unhinging of her legs for Grand Moff Tarkin-”

 

She cuts Hux off by standing, her voice slowly rising from a controlled, low murmur to a dangerous pitch Ren hasn’t heard anyone besides his master invoke. “You were still on the teat and your father was still _babysitting_ as a commandant at the academy on Arkanis when I was entrusted with the operation of an _entire fleet_ in deep cover without a shred of contact with the known galaxy for nearly eight years. _YOU SIT DOWN_ ,” Admiral Daala roars.

 

Hux is so angry that he turns purple. But he does sit.

 

\----

 

The First Order delegation is expected any day. Like many carrion birds to a carcass, neutral sides show up on Coruscant to watch the war that will no doubt be waged on the senate floor. 

 

The Hapans arrive first, a manifold flock of painfully beautiful women with a young prince at the head to represent the Queen-Mother of the Consortium. The entirety of the Hutt Ruling Council from the Outer Rim drop by the following week, parking a massive leisure barge in Coruscant’s orbit. They  _always_ float in on grav-platforms to senate sessions half an hour late with an army of serving droids and dancing girls. Even the long-necked, willowy Kaminoans from beyond the Rishi Maze show up last minute with their Prime Minister - the first time in galactic history that a formal envoy from their reclusive society appears in the Core.

 

One night Leia pops her head in to Rey’s room. A stylus is orbiting Rey’s head, a habit she’s picked up when she’s concentrating on her holopad and needs the tool handy. Much like flexing a muscle, she reaches for the Force ever so often for the most mundane of things. Never in public. Mostly. 

 

Rey is hard pressed to admit that the nasty spill the Hutt lord Marlo took off his dais during one senate reception wasn’t entirely accidental. Coincidently, the strange incident happened after she overheard him saying something snide and crude about Leia in Huttese.

 

“We’ve got company coming in about an hour for dinner - nothing formal. Just an old friend and his group,” Leia tells her, ducking back out to help Threepio tidy up the already immaculate apartment for company.

 

Rey catches the stylus as its orbit decays with the loss of focus on her end. 

 

\----

 

Threepio opens the door on the Mandalorian delegation Rey is so familiar with plus a new face. At the head of them is a tall man in green _beskar_ armor whose sandy-colored hair is going silver at the temples. They file into the apartment, the blonde man’s long-legged stride eating up the ground between him and Leia.

 

“ _Leia’ika!_ ” he booms, quite literally sweeping the general off her feet to spin her around before she can move to greet him. She laughs like a young girl, gripping his shoulders before he puts her back on her feet. Artoo lets out a _whoor-eet_ of recognition, scooting forward towards the warrior.

 

“My word! Greetings, Mandalore,” squawks Threepio in surprise. Rey has a feeling that this is more of a reunion than an actual dinner. Mirta comes over to her side of the table, nudging her in the ribs with an armored elbow. The Mandalorian girl starts setting out containers her and others brought along - dinner, by the looks of it. And tall bottles of _tihaar_ that almost make Rey wince in memory of her last run-in with the stuff. Rey catches Mirta’s gaze, points at the mystery man’s back and mouthes, _Mandalore?_ Mirta’s silent wink is an affirmation. Rey looks at Fenn Shysa with barely veiled awe.

 

“Ah, the little deshcan lives. And your old protocol droid,” he motions to Threepio and Artoo.

 

“I think Artoo remembers you, but I doubt Threepio can recognize you with as many memory wipes he’s had over the years.” Artoo lets out a _wweet_ of agreement at Leia.

 

“Introductions - you know my people. Your young gal over here knows Mirta, I’m told,” Shysa motions to Rey. Mirta glances up from arranging the containers on the table. Leia looks like she’s seen a ghost when she spots the mythosaur etched in red on the girl’s breastplate.

 

“And I’ve heard of Mirta. How’s your grandfather?” Leia addresses Rey’s friend. Mirta looks almost _sheepish_ for some reason Rey can’t fathom. 

 

“Allow me to answer,” Shysa cuts in before Mirta can reply, “ornery and _old_. But doing better, now that he’s channeling all of that pent-up resentment about retiring into _farming_ for a change. Who’d have thought? He said to send his regards and regrets, princess - and I’m quoting him directly. Same goes for me,” Shysa’s tone goes from jovial to somber in the span of a sentence. He takes Leia’s weathered hands between his own. 

 

Rey’s watched Leia receive condolences from nearly the entire galaxy since arriving on Coruscant and the subsequent news of Han Solo’s death hitting the mainstream media. The general has held up a solid, uncompromising front so far, never cracking once. But Shysa’s words nearly break her. Rey feels the rippling waves off of the bright, burning form that is Leia, like a stone tossed into a very still pond. 

 

“Thank you, Fenn,” Leia tells him in a low, choked voice. Rey knows she means it.

 

\----

 

Rey discovers that a traditional Mandalorian dinner is a grand affair filled with too much _tihaar_ and spicy food that makes her sinuses burn in a pleasant way. The stories are the best. Fenn Shysa is a gifted narrator, reconstructing past exploits in exquisite detail. When they finish off the last course, Rey ducks out onto the balcony to get some much needed air. _Tihaar_ still makes her head spin after a scant sip or two.

 

Fenn Shysa joins her after a few minutes. “Now that I get a proper look at you,” he starts, eyeing her like she’s a new species of rare bird.

 

“ _Fierfek_. You’re the real deal, aren’t you?” he asks, his eyes crinkling at the corners when he spots the saber tucked into the folds of her tunic. “I never thought I’d live to see the day when more than one _jetti_ walked upright after Palpatine put the rest of you in the dirt. Skywalker’s probably beside himself, since that first trial run at bringing ‘em back crashed _spectacularly_ and left him without anyone to start fresh.” 

 

“You were around for that?”

 

“On the fringe. I knew him - vaguely, y’know,” he adds. Rey knows who _him_ is.

 

Shysa comes over to the railing, leaning over to look at the chasm of light below where the lower wards of the city thrum. “I met the kid when Leia brought ‘em around to Mandalore during one of her diplomatic visits to Keldabe to talk shop with me. He couldn’t have been higher than your hip - bright kid, very headstrong. Grew up on stories of all of us. Didn’t show a slip of what we all should’ve seen, considering who his granddad was. Knew _him_ , too.”

 

“How _old_ are you?” Rey gapes. 

 

“Older than I look. Having a helmet on three-quarters of your life will help keep away wrinkles. That and good ole stims,” he thumps his broad chest for emphasis. Rey laughs and they put their backs to the railing, looking inward at the apartment where the rest of the Mandalorians are relaxing.

 

Rey’s eyes land on Leia. So do Shysa’s. Rey shoots him a look when she realizes his expression is purely wistful. He just grins at her.

  
“Solo and I had a pissing contest over the princess long, _long_ before you were born, kid. Though you’d be hard-pressed to find a man in this galaxy that wasn’t completely mad for Leia back then. Still is the case,” he admits. He’s watching the general through the pane of glass as she talks with the Clan Ordo representative in Shysa’s guard. 

 

\----

 

They’re about to decelerate out of hyperspace aboard Ree’s flagship _Vengeance_ when Kylo makes his way to the bridge. 

 

Admiral Daala and Moff Ree are arguing near the helm about _when_ to decelerate the hyperdrive.

 

“We can do what you want when we’re on your ship, Daala. Right now you’re on mine. My ship, my rules,” snips Ree.

 

“My record is still zero to your _one_ spectacular wreck, Ree. I’ve yet to smash a star destroyer into a planet. And I say when we decelerate,” Daala barks.

 

“Daala, that was intentional. I _scuttled_ the fragging ship. In any case, I’m the one most familiar with the maneuver.” Ree sets down her cup of caf, the porcelain clinking against the durasteel of the helm’s console. She shoos a highly agitated captain out of the way. She takes the controls and Kylo feels a knot of unease form in his stomach.

 

“The last time you Kissed Atmo was pre-menopause,” Daala warns Ree, finally relenting to step away from the helm in a huff.

 

“Admiral?” Kylo asks Daala as she joins him at the starboard viewport. She shakes off the unspoken question in his tone, simply pointing a finger at Moff Ree. “Just watch what she does and hold on to your ass,” she instructs. Kylo shoots a glance at the various readouts along the bridge’s main viewscreen. They’re closing in on Coruscant along the Namadii Corridor at a dangerous speed. He can sense some of the younger crewmen start to panic, but feels a building excitement in some of the older officers and enlisted once they see who is at the helm.

 

Ree waits until the very _last_ second to decelerate the hyperdrive, slamming the override to bring the sublight engines online to pull the ship _up_. The ship’s stabilizers dampen the sudden jerk, but many lurch forward at the loss of gravity. Daala carefully adjusts her caf to keep it from spilling. 

 

As the maneuver’s name might suggest, they are indeed barely brushing the upper reaches of Coruscant’s atmosphere. All nineteen thousand meters of them. Ree lets out an undignified whoop. 

 

Their communications go haywire with traffic as the New Republic reacts to the sudden appearance of a super star destroyer in their airspace. They expected at minimum a star destroyer to uncloak near their moon, not _this_ display. Smaller patrol ships circle them as a Republic capital ship lurches around to challenge the _Vengeance_ , but Kylo knows it is only for show.

 

“Your grandfather taught me that trick - pure intimidation tactic. Nothing quiets planetary revolts quite like a star destroyer dropping out of hyperspace right on top of them,” Ree addresses this to Kylo as she joins the pair at the viewport, caf cup in hand. The admiral and her are about to do the run-through of all the points to touch on during this session with the New Republic’s rebuilt senate. Ren is merely spectating. 

 

“Food for thought, Ree - if you had choked on that move, we’d have launched the next intergalactic war by smashing a super star destroyer at lightspeed straight into Coruscant. What a way to go,” Daala says wistfully. Ree looks thoughtful at that. 

 

“If it happened, the Order could’ve played it off like it was intentional?” the former captain volunteers to the older officer. Daala agrees by clinking their caf cups together.

 

Kylo feels the start of a migraine behind his eyes.

 

\----

 

Rey is dressing when she notices a sudden shift in the Force and a faint ripple along the surface of her morning cup of tea. A clap like artillery fire resonates afterwards, startling her. She glances out the window as the sun disappears, throwing a shadow over everything. Rey rushes out of her room to the apartment’s balcony to get a better look. Blocking out every visible inch of sky is the underside of a massive super star destroyer.

 

“Oh,” she manages. Leia joins her along the balcony, muttering something about _showoffs_ as she tries to talk down Chief Bwua’tu from doing anything rash like firing on the ship.

 

\----

 

Rey is standing behind Mon Mothma and Leia on the landing platform of the Senate Rotunda when the First Order delegation steps off the landing ramp of the command shuttle. Rey can barely detect the slump of Leia’s shoulders when the entire delegation exits the shuttle and her son is nowhere in sight. She doesn’t know if it’s relief or disappointment. Rey herself feels a distinct mix of both.

 

The First Order sent their women to mediate this exchange, it seems. Rey catches a flash of sunlight on chrome and recognizes Captain Phasma, Finn’s old commander. She has her blaster rifle resting across her chest, escorting two uniformed women with a firesquad of stormtroopers across the platform to greet the speaker’s group.

 

\----

 

The exchange doesn’t get unbearably tense until the two uniformed Order women slink to the back of the group, blocking Leia and Rey. Only the stormtroopers and Phasma slow their steps - the rest of the party continues the walk down the arcade to the senate floor, chiefly oblivious.

 

“Princess.” The way the first woman pronounces the title makes it sound like a sharp barb. Leia stops as the other woman circles her in observation. Rey’s hair pricks up on the back of her neck. She feels the reassuring weight of her saber within the folds of her gown. The ebony skinned moff hangs back while the admiral doing the majority of the talking drops her eyes to Leia’s stomach, tutting. “You’re getting slack in the middle, Organa. Old age catching up?” Both the officers are tall, lean creatures with narrow expressions and greying hair.

 

“Still bitter over my brother vaporizing Tarkin to a fine particle matter, Daala?” Leia asks, faintly amused as she holds her ground. Rey watches the admiral’s carefully controlled exterior crack to reveal something dark and ugly beneath - fanaticism mixed with grief. 

 

“General,” Rey appears at Leia’s elbow, steering her away before an incident occurs. People are already starting to stare.

 

Daala’s gaze lingers on Rey’s back for an uncomfortable amount of time.

 

\----

 

Rey stays with Mirta for a little while at the Outlander Club after the session adjourns. It’s well into the night cycle and she is two cups into some decent spice wine.

 

Her comm goes off with a ping. She glances at the frequency and nearly spills her drink answering the call. “How did you get this frequency?” she asks, her voice tinged with amusement. The feed is regretfully audio only. Though she’d imagine a holo projection of Kylo Ren on her comm would start more than a few rumors.

 

“It’s not exactly unlisted. Besides, I don’t need your frequency to get your attention. This is just an easier way to get a hold of you, seeing as you have no intention of opening up the bond except to pester me.” Force, just hearing his voice after so long makes her knees want to give out.

 

“Who is _that_?” Mirta finally pulls her eyes off the boloball game on the screen. 

 

“A friend - gotta go,” Rey replies automatically. She can hear Kylo actually _laugh_ on his end of the call as she slides her way through the press of bodies to the entrance. 

 

“No, _I’m_ a friend - that’s more than a friend. Call me if you need backup,” Mirta shouts over her shoulder while Rey makes her way for the exit. 

 

“What do you want?” she asks when she finally gets out into the open air of the lower wards. 

 

“To talk,” it’s muffled, but distinctly stated. She wonders where he is. On a planet like this, feeling him out through the Force is about as easy as searching for a single hydrospanner in an endless desert. 

 

“We’re talking now,” she needles. Her hands fumble for the keys as she starts the search for her speeder, clicking a button until the loaned JG-8 that Leia keeps on their building’s speeder deck pulls up curbside. Rey tosses her bag into the passenger side and slides into her seat, setting the comm on the dashboard as she takes the speeder up to the nearest skyway to her building.

 

“In person. Not over the bond or a comm.” Rey can hear the annoyance mounting in his voice. She puts her foot on the accelerator a little too hard. Her building comes up on the port side. 

 

“I’m booked solid for the next few months, if you can’t tell.”

 

“From desert junker to diplomat. You look good in the holos, I’ll say.” Rey veers right, setting the speeder down on the speeder deck of her building. She kills the engine and starts clicking across the duracrete to the lifts, eager to get back to the privacy of her room so she can figure out what to do with him on her commline. 

 

“You look at my holos?” she asks, winded from jogging to the lifts. She hits a button, waiting mere moments before the doors open on her floor.

 

“I’m always looking.” 

 

Rey enters the apartment and hears the ping of the line disconnecting before she feels the ripple through the Force. She sees a man’s shape in the sitting room’s farthest chair and drops her comm.

 

“How did you get through customs?” It’s a light-hearted jab to cover the noise her heart is making in her chest. He can probably hear it pounding from where he sits. 

 

“I bypassed customs,” he japes back. His helmet isn’t anywhere to be seen. He’s wearing his usual robes. The deep folds of his hood are slouched across his back, legs spread with his elbows planted on his knees. “I know the general and the droids aren’t going to be back for a number of hours. She won’t leave the senate building until Daala and Ree get back on that shuttle.”

 

“I could call security.”

 

“That’d be a needless waste of life and I’d rather not foul up these talks barely twelve hours into them. Neither should you.”

 

“Then you’re firmly invading my privacy. Please leave,” she steps aside, motioning at the door. He doesn’t budge an inch.

 

“We’re well beyond the point of privacy.” She feels the tug on his end of the bond, as if he’s emphasizing that nothing passes unseen or unknown between them when they’re this _physically_ close.

 

\----

 

He should’ve done something, _anything_ to prepare for the physical impact of seeing Rey again. His mother has polished her into a fine gloss, manicured nails and queenly fabrics. She’s dressed in some shade of off-white. The irony isn’t lost on him. He imagines her in darker colors at his side and gems swathing her throat. Something unspoken that Snoke promises everytime he instructs Kylo to bring him Rey. 

 

“You haven’t spoken to me in months,” he manages to grind out - it comes off like an accusation. The air rushes out of him and his shoulders slump. He threads a hand through his hair as she puts out the lamps he didn’t care to extinguish on entering. It casts the apartment into darkness, the only light leaking in from the cityscape beyond the balcony windows.

 

“What else was I supposed to do? You up and left without a word.” She's frustratingly calm about this.

 

“Because I didn’t have anything to say,” he bites back angrily. 

 

Something twists in his chest. He can still feel the resonance of his mother here. When Kylo looks at the vase that holds a cluster of gingerbells from the indoor arboretum she visits every first day of the month, he feels like he’s taking a blaster bolt to the chest. 

 

Everything is too real in this apartment, too keen. At least outside of the confines of his old life, he can distance himself from the feelings and that strong seeping of light that tries to edge its way back into his thoughts. 

 

Rey can sense his discomfort. Her face shows it. 

 

“C’mon,” she motions him. They make their way into her own room. It’s a riot of warm colors and heavy fabrics draped over the low platform bed and other surfaces, the ochres and ambers of her desert. More of his mother’s touches, he imagines. 

 

“So why the unexpected social call? I thought we were going to avoid each other and keep a minimum of five star systems between us,” she mutters, low enough to sound impish but loud enough for him to hear. Rey clears a chair out for him, tossing her brick-a-brac collection of fabrics and half-constructed devices onto her equally cluttered desk.

 

He takes the only chair by the window and she finds a seat on her dresser facing him.

 

\----

 

Rey feels the weight of her saber press reassuringly into her hip when she settles on her dresser-top. She can see his unholy mess of a saber tucked in the folds of his robes. 

 

“What is it that brings you down here at one in the morning?” she asks him again after her first question goes unanswered. 

 

“I can’t sleep when you’re this close,” he says, eyes locking onto her, “and neither can you.”

 

“Some bond formed because you shoved into my mind too hard that day, and now we’re tethered,” she explains what she and Luke reasoned out months before. Kylo doesn’t look surprised. 

 

“We’re Force-bonded. Something ancient, pre-dating the Great Hyperspace Wars. It goes deeper than you know,” he tells her. She scoffs.

 

“How do we break it?”

 

“Do you _want_ to break it?” He sounds angry. Unreasonably angry. He feels _hurt_.

 

“You’d probably have to kill me to break it at this point,” she reassures him after a moment. He physically recoils at her words.

 

“You’re the last person I’d kill in this entire galaxy, scavenger.”

 

“Why’s that?” she challenges, holding his gaze.

 

“I’m still holding out for when you get tired of _this_ and come to realize there’s a quicker way to kill Snoke instead of dancing around politics and shipping contracts. That involves you having a pulse and actually swinging a saber.”

 

“I thought you were trying to emulate Vader. Wasn’t his whole approach to being a Sith the unwavering loyalty he held towards his master?”

 

“Right before he threw him down a maintenance shaft.”

 

“ _Right_.”

 

\----

 

It hits full force in the gut when Ren realizes his grandfather was enslaved to Sidious the moment he raised his hand against his grandmother.

 

He only became powerful enough to destroy him decades later when he raised his hand again to help his son.

 

\----

 

“My uncle wouldn’t agree to this, even though he was closer to the dark side at one point than I am _now_. You’re strong enough, Rey - you could finish this with me.”

 

She hesitates, opening and shutting her mouth. Rey fists her hands in the beautiful lace capping her shoulders. It falls in a train down her back to the floor when she’s standing. Right now it’s crumpled and wrinkling on the dresser-top. 

 

“Rey, come with me,” and suddenly he’s Ben Solo, plain faced in the low neon light the city casts through the clari-crystalline of her windows.

 

“Are you still trying to fulfill this prophecy? The one that’s gotten more than a few people _killed_ in the process of seeing it through - there is no prophecy, just us. What comes after we kill Snoke? You take over what’s left and start spiraling the galaxy into a new war. It won’t  _stop_ as long as there’s a Sith in this galaxy.” Rey’s voice rises, steady. She watches his hands grip the arms of his chair and his head bend. 

 

“You have no room for me in this future as a Jedi, I _know it_. There _is_ room for me as something dark and twisted up inside as you can be. I may not know much, but I know I’m not _Sith_. And despite the fact that you’ve done more than enough to make yourself a Sith, you’ll never be one,” she bites out. She knows she’s hit a nerve by the way he almost lurches out of his chair to advance on her. 

 

Rey lashes out with the Force, pinning him to the chair. She keeps him there as he struggles, fighting back with surges of his own power. Rey towers over him and lets the Force wash over him in waves, twisting in her tide.

 

“You’ve been made a _slave_  by Snoke. You’re a slave to this power. You alienate everyone around you with it. The Jedi used to say that all a Sith will ever know is that _yourself_ is all that you’ll ever have if you keep down this path. Even your grandfather figured that out in the end, Ren,” she spits out with venom.

 

That finally breaks him. 

 

\----

 

“Rey,” and suddenly he’s truly Ben Solo - his voice, his face. Her heart climbs into her throat.

 

“Stay with us, stay with me. Come home, _please_ ,” she comes as close to him as she dares, back in that familiar radius around him when they were on the _Falcon_ and still reluctant to get within striking distance of each other’s saber-reach. He feels something hitch in his chest at her hesitation to get near him. 

 

\----

 

“I can’t,” he chokes out. Finally, his voice isn’t pitched with that dark undercurrent. Ben Solo is talking to her. 

 

She doesn’t wait for him. Rey releases her hold on him and sinks into his lap, threading her arms around his neck. It’s the closest she’s ever felt the pulsing of light overwhelm the threads of darkness tying him together, threatening to spill out of his chest and into her. 

 

\----

 

He can’t look her in the face. If he does, he knows he won’t be able to leave, to disentangle himself from this snare she’s caught him in. The ache between them lessens the closer he presses to her. He relents and finally embraces her for the first time. It hits him how slim and small she feels in his arms. Rey tips his head back from where he has it buried in her neck, breathing in the soft smell of something spice-like before he feels the patter of her tears hit the scar she made across his face. Her soft mouth edges over his.

 

She’s _crying_ for him. Everything whites out.

 

\----

 

Kylo isn’t sure how she goes from kissing him senseless to sinking between his knees, kicking off her heels and shutting the door with an audible _click_ of the lock engaging as the push from the Force abates. The transition from emotional rawness to arousal nearly gives him whiplash. 

 

“Rey,” he manages, silenced by how quick and clever her hands are. She’s got a mechanic’s touch - cursory, expert, never staying on one spot for too long. Yet he feels how shaky her fingers are as she fumbles with the release clasps on his cloak and robes. 

 

Rey tugs up the sheath of her dress to skim barely above her knees, exposing her tan legs and bare feet so she can kneel. 

 

\----

 

“Do you want me to touch you?” she asks, framing his hips with her hands. Rey rubs circles into the skin beneath the thin layer of cloth. He’s not wearing armor beneath - only the plain black flightsuit. She feels powerful on her knees, the faint ridge of his cock hardening beneath her fingertips.

 

When he doesn’t reply, she stops touching him through the thin layer of his bodysuit. 

 

“ _Yes_ ,” he forces out. It’s comes out like a plea. His hands pluck the pins out of her hair. “It’s gotten longer since last time.” That’s the closest he gets to praise, Rey supposes. He looks stupefied as it spills like sand through his hands, falling nearly down to the middle of her spine and pooling across his lap. He repeats the gesture, sliding his hands forward to cup her face. Rey tucks her chin inward, pressing her mouth against the thick leather covering his palms. 

 

\----

 

“Have you ever done this before?” she asks.

 

“You’re going to make me _talk_ through this?” he nearly shouts. As if the twitching, shuddering mess of his cock didn’t say volumes of what he thought about her attentions. 

 

“Mmm. Hmm,” she replies, the noises as vague as Rey can be towards him. He feels the heavy fall of her hair hit the fabric covering his thighs and he nearly starts out of the seat. Rey’s hands and a gentle press of the Force keep him anchored. She slips his cock out of the slit in his bodysuit, wrapping her small fingers around the girth of it. His head drops against the back of the chair and he forces himself to start breathing through his nose to calm the racing beat of his heart. 

 

“I haven’t,” he admits to the ceiling, disliking the edge of panic that colors his voice. Her sure, steady hands aren’t shaking like his are. Rey is always a rock in the middle of a storm compared to him.

 

“Neither have I,” she says, her voice thready with nervousness and want. He feels the pointed tip of her clever tongue trace the slit, catching the bead of fluid pearling there before her mouth makes a tight seal around the swollen glans to suck. 

 

Kylo regrets his spine being treacherous enough to re-solidify moments later, his head coming off the back of the chair so he can angle a look at her. Her lips are stretched obscenely around his cock and his brain shorts out for a moment. He tries digging deep into his mind for some other point of focus to keep from spilling down her throat at the sight. Rey seems to sense his panic and brings her mouth off him with a soft, wet _pop_. 

 

“You can’t come yet,” Rey warns him. It’s a command that makes the length of him spasm in her grip. He works his jaw, the bond in flux as he _sees_ himself through her eyes. Pupils blown, hair disheveled from her hands, robes askew. She shifts and the room nearly spins because he can feel how tight the fabric of her dress is where it bunches around her thighs, the throbbing in her cunt, the stringent taste of him on her tongue.

 

“I can stop if you want,” she adds, halting his trembling in his thighs by spreading her fingers along them to squeeze reassuringly. 

 

“I didn’t say stop,” he rushes out. She smiles, something secret and satisfied. Her fingers tighten and pull up, forming a ring of friction over his overheated, slick skin. 

 

“ _Fuck_ ,” he swears viciously, trying to untangle his mind from hers before he spills over her hands like last time. He releases his grip on the chair, burying his hands in her hair. He discovers a single hand can cup the back of her skull, as she’s so damn _small_ compared to him. Kylo feels like blunt edges and ragged lines next to the sun-baked, sleek curves that make up Rey.

 

She tips forward and takes him back into her mouth. Her small fingers spread along the back of his hand, urging him to show her how smoothly they can work like this. He gets the idea - a slow pull to her hair and she’s bobbing her head, friction riding like chain lightning down his cock as her tongue worries at a thick vein. He’s too thick to take all the way, but she gamely takes him nearly to the damn hilt. They're clumsy at first, eventually finding a rhythm that lets him enjoy the sensation without bringing him to the brink too quickly. He loses himself. 

 

One downstroke has his cock hitting the back of her throat - Rey simply fights back against the reflex to choke, her mouth and throat _clenching_. Kylo actually whines - _whines_ at the sensation. It takes mere moments locked like that and he feels it through the bond when her jaw starts to ache when finally - _Force_ \- he spills hot on her tongue. 

 

The girl has the audacity to keep on sucking until he has to gently pry her off, overwrought and hypersensitive. His heart feels like it’s going to burst out of his chest.

 

Rey sits back on her heels and swallows, gasping for air. Watching Rey’s throat work to swallow his come is the nearest thing to a religious experience he’s had in ages.

 

Kylo Ren can barely feel his legs and knows that he has to rework his timetables very, _very_ soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm ready to embrace the cleansing nuclear fire of the hell that awaits a sinner like me for writing Reylo blowjob scenes.
> 
> All the characters above are drawn either from the EU or canon 'verse. 
> 
>  
> 
> [Rey's Delegation Gown](http://starwarstyle.tumblr.com/post/132375236399/what-if-princess-queen-leia-leia-of-house)
> 
> [Natasi Daala](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Natasi_Daala)
> 
> [The Vengeance](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Vengeance_\(Vengeance-class\))
> 
> [Ciena Ree](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ciena_Ree)
> 
> [Fenn Shysa](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Fenn_Shysa)
> 
> [Mirta Gev's grandfather, for the uninitiated](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Boba_Fett/Legends)
> 
> [Djem-So quote source](http://www.jediholo.net/archives/documents/form-v-djem-so/)


	7. Form VI: Niman

**Form VI - Niman**

 

_“Also known as the Way of the Rancor, the Moderation Form, or the diplomat's form. A hybrid martial art created by effectively combining elements of the preceding lightsaber forms into a single, generalized form. Niman balanced out between the various specializations of the other forms, covering many of the basic moves, but focusing on overall moderation. This resulted in a fighting style that lacked a significant advantage, but also lacking any serious drawbacks, and thereby not leaving adherents as exposed as some of the more aggressive or specialized forms.”_

 

 **R** ey draws patterns over his back, the distant outlines of constellations in the Western Reaches - the skies she used to live under. She’s busy mapping the outline of a steelpecker, connecting one freckle to the next with imaginary lines. He’s still highly suspect of her whenever she lays a finger on him. 

 

She imagines it’s not so much flinching at the touch as it is hesitation about _being_ touched. Kylo Ren hasn’t had human contact for the most common of gestures for years until she came along - a handshake or accidental brush of skin on skin are all as uncommon as exposing his face in public.

 

“Is the general back?” he tenses under her fingers. Rey feels him cast out his senses. They've only been in this room for two hours.

 

“She’s yet to get back,” Rey reassures him. Moving her legs gingerly seems to be the status quo after he’d licked her tender and raw - she’d be sitting funny in senate meetings for days. She rises from the bed and pads naked to her closet, winding her hair into a loose knot as she searches for a robe. Her dress is in pieces on the floor, another fallen soldier in the violent war he seems to be waging on her clothing. 

 

“So why are you really here?” she asks, belting the robe. She turns to find him perched on the edge of the bed, staring out at the cityscape outside her windows. His back is a wide expanse of burn marks and freckles, very broad - one of his best features, in her mind. Rey weaves around the furniture to join him, pressing thigh to thigh as she reclines on the bed beside him. 

 

“Snoke wants me to bring you back, with or without you say in it,” he answers with some measure of hesitation, “You’re a focal point of the Force just as I am, only with an ability that is far-reaching and extremely valuable. A sort of battle meditation that isn’t fully developed, but it could change the course of the war if he or Skywalker were to hone it.”

 

“It’s that thing from the forest, isn’t it?” Rey remembers it, the flow of power to her limbs as she focused in on herself and found that wellspring within her of knowledge she didn’t possess in the first place. 

 

“Yes,” he tells her, “like the bond. Only something else entirely. You visualize what you want to happen, and your body follows. We could share it _through_ the bond with training. In the field it would make us two halves of the same whole - a single synchronized force against what ever Snoke wanted us to fight.”

 

“And beyond that? What use does he have for you and I?”

 

“I’d imagine he wants us to produce a Force-sensitive child. Dispose of us, sever all attachments like you and I possess. Someone he could condition from birth - to what purpose, I’ve no clue,” he admits.

 

Rey hovers a hand near his shoulder, wanting to grip it reassuringly. She withdraws it before it can touch the surface of his skin and sits up beside him. “My way doesn’t entail coming along as your prisoner. So plan beta,” she starts. 

 

\----

 

Negotiations deteriorate in less than two days, of course.

 

Daala says something too smart or sharp to the New Republic’s senate and the rest of the talks tailspin into a wonderful mess of infighting as sides are taken. Some systems and neutral conglomerates support the New Order. Others viciously reject the Order with tenfold the animosity they held towards the Galactic Empire.   

 

Kylo at this point wonders if Snoke meant to put up a convincing front, sending officers with strongly pre-disposed opinions towards the Republic built by _decades_ of conflict and more than their fair share of loss at the hands of those that built the New Republic. Daala and Ree figuratively take the peace talks out back and cleanly put a blaster bolt between the proverbial eyes.

 

In the end, those two share the dubious honor of informing the Corellians that their debt is being called in ahead of time. The fleet will arrive to escort their new destroyers to the Unknown Regions within the next few cycles. 

 

_\----_

 

They trade holofrequency codes on the pretense of keeping aware of each other’s movements. He ensures her the encryption is ironclad with far too many failsafes in place, though he does warn her about using it in a Republic system with Republic firewalls, likewise for First Order space. Rey tries to pretend there isn’t something deeper in the action of trading each other’s codes to their personal comms. 

 

\----

 

“The Supreme Leader is hailing us for a transmission, my lord,” shouts a technician over the din of the command bridge. Kylo notices the sudden drop of noise in the room after that is made public.

 

“Slow us to sublight speed,” he orders the helmsmen. Already he can feel the faint stirrings of unease within him. He can hide large portions of his interactions with Rey from this distance, but how can he explain away the failure of the entire operation meant to extract her from Coruscant?

 

His distraction is keen, and he doesn’t catch the snatch of conversation between the two women before he exits the room.

 

“I remember when he was still a gangly, angry teenager on my ship. He’s gotten a measure calmer this last year and I can’t quite put my finger on it,” Daala says to Ree, absently stirring her tea. She pierces the thin skin that has formed on the surface from sitting untouched for too long, letting it drift through the liquid until it dissolves. 

 

“Probably the completion of his training,” Ree offers up for speculation.

 

“Possibly. Are you getting that _sense_ , though?”

 

“That he’s more like the Supreme Commander before his death? Yes,” Ree sighs, lifting her cup to her mouth. Daala turns to watch Lord Vader’s grandson pass through the blastdoors. 

 

\----

 

Rey doesn’t even have time to pack. Her and Leia are hustled onto a transport as soon as the _Vengeance_ leaves the sector. Shysa and his Mandalorians follow with their own fleet, packed to the gills with troops. Auxiliary forces to supplement their ground troops.

 

They’re back on Ord Mantell within the next day cycle to sort out the first advance party to blockade Corellia after the Corellian Engineering Corporation sends word that the Order is coming to collect the finished destroyers in their drive yards in full force. 

 

\----

 

“I’m noting a distinct lack of the girl on your ship, Ren,” his master says, the massive hologram filling the room before the blastdoors even close. It’s the flattest, coldest tone he’s heard Snoke use with him. Even from this distance he can feel the beginnings of pressure around his throat. He doesn’t fight it. He welcomes the pain at this point, the sharpening edge of sensation. The more inflicted, the more he can deal - the stronger his resistance becomes. 

 

“There were unforeseen complications, master - forgive me,” he drops to a knee. The pressure around his throat abates.

 

Kylo Ren opens his mouth and weaves the best lie he and Rey constructed.

 

\----

 

“You’ve crafted for this Order a double agent, my young apprentice. Very impressive.”

 

“She’s promised to feed us information on Resistance movements and Skywalker, my lord, with the opportunity I’ve placed as a reward for her - that of discovering who her family truly is. Something the Resistance and the New Republic cannot provide her with.”

 

“And so, she will lead us to Skywalker and to the true extermination of the Jedi.”

 

When he leaves, he knows deep in his gut that Snoke never takes anything at face value. He stays awake all night with his saber in hand, staring down his blastdoor in his room. Waiting for the assassin he knows will come one day.

 

\----

 

 _Home One_ is the first to spot the incoming star destroyers dropping out of hyperspace like a swam of insects. Rey is hustled out of her bunk by Chewie, wriggling into her borrowed flightsuit before she even knows what is happening.

 

The Battle of the Corellian Blockade begins.

 

\----

 

The third hour of the battle sees the Resistance losing. Badly. Rey breaks away from defending the bulk of the fleet to start flying in tandem with Rapier Squadron on an offensive run.

 

“Alright, kids. Let’s keep it low and tight over this debris field. We’ll try and take out the communications array on the _Finalizer_ after Green Group gets their forward shields shot down.” Poe’s voice leaks out of the _Falcon_ ’s intercom. 

 

“Copy that, Black Leader,” she queues over the main feed.

 

“Good to have you back, Rey,” he says over their private feed. BB-8 trills in agreement.

 

Rey can feel the sublight engines humming from here. Finn is talking over the comm from the AG-2G quad laser cannon. For the first time in a long while, the ship has a full crew with someone in every seat. Finn’s people are with her. A Sullustan bombardier manning the other quad laser cannon, an Ithorian crouched over the transponder, Chewie copiloting. A slew of other people are jammed onto the _Falcon_ , each manning a station. 

 

 _“Ready, Finn_?” Chewie roars. 

 

“Ready!”

 

Rey kicks the sublight engines into maximum drive, wedging the _Falcon_ between the s-foils of two X-wings before they drop into the black of the star field. 

 

\----

 

 _Is that you back there?_ Rey feels the familiar press of his mind once a wing of TIE interceptors come into view on her port sensors. She maneuvers smoothly away from the beams of green their wing leader aims at her forward shields. 

 

_Yes._

 

_Get OFF of my ion trail._

 

_You fly that bucket of scrap like an amateur._

 

_Want to swap? I’m sure you’re next to inherit._

 

“Watch the squints on your six, Rey! Bank,” Poe shouts over the main channel. 

 

Rey pulls left, accelerating over a hunk of burning Resistance wreckage. She feels Kylo’s irritation as one of his wingmen fails to adjust his course and goes out in a blaze of vapor. 

 

\----

 

Before the battle, when the notion of boarding _Home One_ to capture General Organa with a coordinated strike team comes up, Kylo is the first to demand to take pointe on the operation with his team. Some officers, Hux especially, protest due to the perceived “conflict of interest” inherent in letting Kylo Ren, formerly Ben Solo, lead the operation to detain his mother.

 

He reminds them that he has no such qualms about executing the orders of the Supreme Leader, just as he had no issue killing an unarmed Han Solo when he had every opportunity to let the man leave Starkiller Base unscathed. All protests end there and he’s made the leader of the strike team.  

 

It’s not a main objective. It might not even work. But if it does, he’d rather it be him than any other Knight of Ren.

 

\----

 

And here he finds himself in _Home One_ ’s hanger bay after ditching his TIE interceptor for the command shuttle. His firesquad exits with Phasma at the lead, already intent on their route. He sees Chewbacca exiting a wounded _Falcon_ and Rey attempting to pry molten wreckage off hanger personnel he knows are already dead. Still, she tries.

 

The heat of his saber’s quillons nearly burn through his glove after he ignites. He adjust his grip, feeling the heft of the blade as it angles down. Rey’s saber ignites across the bay and they come running at each other full tilt. He can’t help but feel a very misplaced sense of pride when she answers his heavy swing with a deflecting slash. Rey saws his blade down with the strength of her parry, tearing a bright, burning scar into the bay’s floor. 

 

\----

 

“ALL CRAFT ABORT, FULL RETREAT,” blares over the ship’s intercom. The alarm klaxons start shrieking, dampening the sounds of their sabers singing off one another’s matched blows. _Home One_ is about to make the jump to hyperspace with the remains of the Resistance fleet. 

 

Phasma and her team are pulling out, having not budged beyond the hall blockade Chewie and Finn made near the turbolifts to the bridge. They’re alone in the hanger. He has her locked up against a transport shuttle, tightly twined as if they were lovers, the barest hint of his mask grazing her cheek. 

 

 _Go_ , she says into his mind once Phasma and her team turn the corner, heading full sprint to the _Upsilon_ -class command shuttle.

 

\----

 

He breaks his saber away from hers, his arm burning from where she’d scored a hit. As they’re taking off, he sees her limp towards Chewbacca, her flightsuit gaping just above where her spine ends - he’d cut clean through the fabric to graze her flesh. He’d nearly lost his footing after scoring that blow, as it’d opened a wide sensation of pain across his own back that still burns.

 

His hands form into fists.

 

\----

 

“Ree, move the _Vengeance_ to orbit Ristel with your complement and wait for my signal. They’re going to try blockading Kuat next and we need an advance party in that sector to cut that nonsense out before it can begin - I don’t want a repeat of this _cluster_ ,” Daala hisses. 

 

He’s striding back to the bridge of the _Finalizer_ after spending a calming five minutes in the ‘fresher with his mask off, trying to will the adrenaline out of his body. Rey gave him a new scar - something wide and gaping across his bicep that he won’t let the med-droids touch just yet.

 

“Nice flying,” Daala mutters to him, distracted by the five screens in front of her.

 

“Nice maneuvers,” he motions to the current mess of the Resistance fleet orbiting Corellia. They’ve gotten what they came for. Hux is already offloading the remainder of their munitions at the Resistance ground forces, if the way the _Finalizer_ is bombarding the unshielded city sectors is anything to go by.

 

He sees _Home One_ make for the hyperspace route, trailed by a few of their lighter battle cruisers trying to hamper its exit from the field.

 

“I sat at the feet of the master, you could say. Now I can go back to the capital without looking like a complete idiot,” Daala sighs, cracking her gnarled fingers once she sees _Home One_ make the jump. He feels tension draining out of him already. 

 

“ _Vengeance_ , here. See you in the jump, admiral,” Ree’s voice comes over the line. Kylo watches the _Vengeance_ lose some of its solidness as it kicks into hyperspace, blurring out of sight with a good third of the fleet following. 

 

Kylo hears Hux communicating on another channel, his tone exultant as he reports a full routing of Resistance forces on the ground. Daala pulls a sour face. “Normally I’d refuse to give that little mynock an iota of praise. But he did a damn fine job of clearing up the ground resistance. Didn’t lose a single ship to an ion cannon. Someone get that piece of kriff Viqi Shesh on the holoterminal. I need to speak with our half of the Ten about the _Eclipse_ project, and show them how _unwise_ it is to hold ships we pay for like the Corellians tried to do here,” Daala barks out at an ensign.

 

She finally untangles her earpiece from her head, setting it on the projector. Kylo dismisses himself and makes for his room to clean up the new scar from Rey himself.

 

\----

 

“I chalk this up as a loss,” Leia says more to herself than anyone standing around the commroom. Ackbar is busy with coordinating the aftermath - the remains of the fleet group up in tight formations in fear of the First Order sallying back to eliminate more capital ships, but readouts from the sector buoys show that they’re all long gone. 

 

Rey is standing near her, nursing vicious carbon burns on the small of her back. She jabs a kolto-pen into her thigh to dull the lancing pain while a med-droid hovers behind, debriding the flesh around the wound to get burned fabric fibers and crisped flesh out of the redness of the wound. Neither she nor Kylo pulled their swings to diminish the force behind them. The kolto does nothing to stave off the pain in her arm - he must not have dosed himself with any kind of palliative meds yet.

 

“I saw a good third of the fleet make the jump to hyperspace behind the _Vengeance_ ,” Rey grits out as the droid’s forceps pry out another piece her flightsuit from the wound. 

 

“Knowing Daala, they’re headed to the Kuat sector. She’s going to try to make her own blockade to counter any Resistance that might try to cut her off from getting the star destroyers the KDY has ready in their orbital docks,” Leia points out where the Corellian Run hyperspace route intersects with the Hydian Way. 

 

“Do we regroup back at base and make for Kuat? Call for backup?”

 

“Another full-out assault when we’re at half-strength would be suicide. We need something covert. So no, we’re not going back to Ord Mantell or D’Qar. Not yet,” Leia says, squinting at a sector in the Outer Rim.

 

Rey looks up as the droid starts swabbing bacta across her skin. “Then _where_?” 

 

\----

 

Rey has a lapful of wriggling strill, a questionable mix between a reptile and a mammal. They’re on Mandalore in the capital, Keldabe. Mirta is sporting a bandage over one eye and her arm in a sling from the beating the hired Mandalorian ground forces took on Corellia. She was caught in heavy crossfire near the Corellian Engineering Corporation command post when Hux’s troops tried to take the station to disengage the docking clamps on a few of the new destroyers. 

 

The entirety of the Resistance is now parked in Mandalore’s orbit. Rey learns that the _Oyu’baat_ , the closest thing you’ll find to an actual government building in the capital city of Keldabe, is a well over three thousand years old and serviceable as a meeting place, hotel, tapcaf, and executive office. They're currently holed up near the back of the bar, killing time between drills and maintenance while the command staff tries to figure out the next move.

 

“It _reeks_ ,” Finn nearly gags when he gets within smelling distance of the strill. Poe looks equally green about the smell of the animal, solving the problem by putting his face nearly into his ale. Chewie makes a roar of agreement at Finn once he lifts his nose up.

 

“I don’t smell anything,” Rey frowns, putting her face into the lumpy folds around the droopy animal’s dear face. It lets out a soft _whuff_ of agreement with her. 

 

“Strill smell different to males than they do to females of most humanoid races. They mostly smell downright _repulsive_ to men whereas they don’t smell like much of anything to us.” Mirta orders another round, shifting her arm to hang more comfortably in the sling. “They’re notoriously protective of pregnant women and kids. They’ll make a nest in the home for young ones if you let them. They have a sense for these things, y’see? Hermaphrodites,” Mirta explains. 

 

“Mirta, get that thing out of here. You know the rules.” Ah. Mirta’s grandfather is stalking up the aisle that separates the bar from the jumble of tables and benches in the center of the main floor. Rey’s introduction to him when the fleet arrived on Mandalore yesterday consisted of a short, terse exchange where he took one look at the saber belted to her side, grunted, and walked on to greet Leia.

 

This time he’s intent on Shysa and the general, seated far back in the tapcaf. Rey watches him join their huddle, his armored back turned to the bar.

 

“Is your grandfather always this cheerful?” Finn asks Mirta, his grip slack on the sabaac cards. He doesn’t notice Poe sneaking peeks at his hand.

 

“Believe me, he used to be _much_ worse,” Mirta mutters into her drink, already reaching for the adolescent strill in Rey’s lap.

 

\----

 

Finn is learning the finer points of sabaac from Chewie and Poe when Rey returns from the ‘fresher. The _Oyu’baat_ is now brimming with patrons, Resistance and Mandalorian alike. Mirta and her have moved to the comfortable booth in the back where the older warriors are resting. 

 

Leia is still talking with Shysa, having barely touched her dinner or drink. Ackbar has joined them with a small projector showing the current traffic in the Kuat sector. First Order markers swarm around the drive yards already, by the looks of it.

 

“Why is it that the Mandalorians are so invested in supporting the Resistance?” Rey asks Shysa as a server sets down a platter of dumplings between them.

 

“Because Mandalorians suffered _bad_ under Imperial rule and we don’t fancy a repeat if the First Order manages to restore the old Galactic Empire,” Shysa explains, spearing a _gi_ dumpling on the end of his knife. “At least under hands-off Republic rule we can make a living out here. Imperials tried to put us too far under the boot. You can’t rule Mandalorians, y’see? Only make suggestions that we might possibly follow, if we’ve got an inclination to listen. And it better be _good_ suggestions. So Imps ruling us, trying to keep us subdued, chafed bad back in the day - rebellions started popping up everywhere, splinter groups of _Mando’a_ getting mowed down because they picked up a blaster to defend homesteads from Imp patrols. Of course, that’s how I got my start as _Mandalore_ \- killing Imps is a good campaign platform.”

 

“I swear I’d eat my own blaster muzzle and pull the trigger if I had to hear Shysa’s _big start_ story one more time,” mutters Mirta’s grandfather, his helmet still clamped firmly in place. He’s gone from standing rigidly on the fringe of their group to slouching against a tall support beam, his blaster rifle resting across his legs. 

 

“Ignore Fett. He was born to be a killjoy,” Shysa assures her, grinning as Boba Fett pointedly turns his back and continues talking with Leia in low tones. 

 

\----

 

Rey gets back to the _Falcon_ late, having stayed up in Mirta’s garage with Finn and Poe for the better part of the night. 

 

Mirta’s old Joban T-85 speeder bike had a broken repulsorlift. Rey swapped out the fried _Belanti_ repulsor for an _Ikas-Adno_ model component she found lying around. It took a bit of convincing on Rey’s part that the hunk of silica and bronzium wiring was still serviceable. She proved as much when she finally got the wiring reinstalled, booting up the engine - now the bike hovered a clear meter off the ground like it was fresh off the line. 

 

Rey brushed off Mirta’s offer to pay her for the work, assuring her that it was a job she could’ve done in half the time. It took longer since she kept putting down her spanner to keep talking with everyone filtering in and out of the garage. She’d just never had so much _freedom_ when working on something. Back on Jakku an overseer would be breathing down her neck in a nanosecond if they sensed her focus wandering away from the task at hand. Actually having time, precious time, to treat a job like a hobby was still such a novelty to her.

 

Rey notices that the ale is going to keep her up for more than a few hours, roiling around in her stomach like two kath hounds scrapping. She retrieves a bucket and a set of cleaning agents from a storage bin and sets to cleaning the ‘fresher, which is a horrendous mess.

 

An hour into the ordeal, she’s managed to make a dent. Most of the grime is gone off every surface in the ‘fresher and she notices the smell has gone from _questionable_ to citrus-scented from the amount of chemicals she’s dumped on every surface.

 

Rey feels a tug at the back of her mind and reaches for her comm, nearly knocking it into the sink. Her timing was perfect - the message comes through before she brings up the display. 

 

 _Rey._ He certainly doesn’t have a wide range of inventive greetings.

 

 _Incoming_ , she taps out a reply before hitting the button to open a line through her ship’s transponder. 

 

Suddenly Rey feels as exposed as a nerve ending when his line picks up on the other end and the low, modular sound of his breathing fills the ‘fresher.

 

“So first things first - decent flying. Second off, _fuck you_ ,” she says the last bit succinctly. The sound of her voice echoes tinny and loud in the tight space.

 

“Where _are_ you?” he asks. She can hear him tapping away at a holopad or terminal. 

 

“The _Falcon_.” 

 

“I’m well aware. But where _in_ the ship?” 

 

“The ‘fresher,” she turns on the wall spigot for extra effect and hears him inhale sharply at the sound of the shower running. “ _Relax_ , Kylo. You’d know if I was calling you from the shower.” 

 

“Why all the racket?” he asks, his voice already taking on a disgruntled burr. 

 

“Cleaning. This ship hasn’t been decontaminated since you were born, I’d imagine.”

 

“Why you’re not having a droid do this is beyond me.” 

 

“Because I don’t have a droid and unlike machines, I can lose track of time and enjoy the work.”

 

“That ship’s been lost for nearly a decade. I’d imagine that the previous owners didn’t care enough about it to maintain it beyond the usual repairs.”

 

“Yknow, a thought comes to mind. You probably were conceived on it.” Her tone is light, teasing. 

 

“ _Rey_ ,” he grits out, warning her that she’s treading into dangerous territory. 

 

“You’re not getting overly excited over a joke, are you?” she grits out, encountering a rather stubborn streak of Force knows _what_ caked to the floor tiles in a neglected corner.

 

“What I _am_ feeling at this moment is an overwhelming sense of exasperation with you.”

 

“Then disconnect. Why’re you even calling?”

 

“Because _you’re_ awake and it is keeping me up. I had to scrub my mouth out from the taste of black ale. You’re in Keldabe, aren’t you?”

 

“That’d be giving away top secret Resistance movements,” she warns him, but she knows he probably has the firm sense of where she is - down to the _city_. The Force bond keeps growing dizzyingly tight, no matter the distance. She woke up the other night with a painful sense of tightness in her face and on her bicep, realizing the scars she gave him were  _aching_ on his end. 

 

“So did he buy it?”

 

“I’m not sure,” he replies. Rey could be imaging things, but she’d swear his voice was shaking.

 

\----

 

The conversation derails much later when Rey finishes cleaning.

 

“Now this is where you ask me what I’m wearing, if the holoshows are true. Answer - that old tunic that comes down mid-back. The one you called a _rag_ the last time you saw me in it.”

 

“It’s a rag. I’ve seen you use it to mop up oil spills.”

 

“Ergo why it’s ideal to wear while sloshing around acidic cleaning solutions. Let me guess what you’re sporting, now, since I know you won’t answer if I ask. Black robes, black boots, black belt, black gloves, black tunic...and the helm.” 

 

“Your sense of perception is astounding.”

 

“About as astounding as the range of color you keep in your wardrobe. I bet you’ve got a red tunic that hasn’t seen sunlight in maybe a _decade_ lying around. Or a blue one.” 

 

He doesn’t correct her.

 

“So you _do_ have a touch of color laying neglected somewhere,” she crows, rocking back on her heels. 

 

“And your back?” he finally asks, steering the conversation elsewhere.

 

“Not as bad as your face,” she grumbles. It isn’t that bad. She decided to keep the scar as a reminder after the droids offered her a skin graft on _Home One_. A reminder of what? She’s not quite sure.

 

Rey stretches, working out a kink in her neck. It’s the kind of stretch that pulls down to her pelvis and toes. She makes sure to strum the bond with the sensation - he shifts, noticeably. A restless crossing and uncrossing of his legs. Rey’s fingers skim over her navel, up, _up_ to the undersides of her breasts, featherlight. She feels her nipples bead against the raw silk, just enough abrasion to make her bare toes curl against the tile.

 

She hears metal groan and knows he’s digging his fingers into the arms of his chair. “I will cut this call off,” he bites out. Rey knows he won’t. 

 

“Are you sure this line is secure?” she asks, her hands dropping to feel the divots her hipbones make through her skin.

 

“Snoke himself would have to override my encryption.”

 

“You’re incredibly gifted as a splicer,” she says, because the man probably doesn’t hear it enough. Ren’s throat is now hot with a flush - she can feel the blood pool in his skin. She imagines her hands over it, squeezing just enough to make his breath draw thin and reedy. Rey feels him reach for the release clasps on his helm as soon as the thought crosses the bond.

 

“Are you even alone?” he asks as the harsh, grating sounds of the voice modulator disappear. He’s pulled the helmet off. She hears it hit the floor with such a force that she knows he’s thrown it across the room.

 

“Of course I am. You think I’d do this with Chewie down the hall?”

 

“And just like that, I’ve lost almost all interest.” She can feel him pinching the bridge of his nose all the way from here.

 

“Don’t be so melodramatic.”

 

\----

 

“I know you think about it. I catch just bare snatches of the images. Yours tend to run more decadent than mine - mainly involving me with some trinket or gem you’ve acquired braided around my throat. My hair is always down. And I’ve always got you pinned in some way with all of your armor _on_ and every last scrap of fabric on me _off_. Sound familiar?” 

 

Rey spreads her legs, feeling whatever binding them strain tighter as he reaches _._ The sound he makes is downright  _filthy_ when she feels the filtered air of the ship fan out over her wet, exposed lips after she tugs her shorts into a twist between her knees. 

 

“Can you feel that?” she asks, the pitch of her tone high and absolutely girlish with uncertainty. Rey is hit by how _silly_ it is to be doing this with him over a commline. To be doing anything remotely resembling intimacy with Kylo Ren. 

 

Then he talks. “Are you wet?” stumbles out of his mouth. 

 

“Of course I’m wet,” she hisses back, peevish. 

 

“I feel it,” he says, sounding nearly struck dumb by the sensation. The press of his mind makes her dizzy, stronger now than it ever was in the interrogation room. Only this time, he’s meeting no mental resistance - she lets him sink in.

 

\----

 

“Tell me what you’re doing _this very second_ ,” he asks her, his tone edging towards pleading. She can feel the strain of his hips, how he fucks harder into his clenched fist when he hears the small, slick sounds of her fingers plunging into her cunt, how _he_ wants to be there. Rey can feel the tracks of sweat trickling down his pectorals and pants into her clenched fist.

 

“My hips are pressed back - if I shut my eyes tight enough I can feel-” she manages to gasp out. She feels the incorporeal press of _something_ along the backs of her thighs. It’s him, she realizes - the difference in height would be more exaggerated in person, but her imagination fills in the lines. The rough fabric covering his thighs, the expectant pause before he guides himself in - then it’s gone. She swallows a frustrated groan. 

 

Her hand fumble between her legs and she finds her clit, swollen and tender. She focuses on the harsh sounds of his breathing, the sounds of skin sliding on skin, the unbridled flow of emotions coming from his end of the bond. Rey keens something that sounds like his name and comes under her own fingers.

 

\----

 

“I just want it stated for the record that both our Sith and Jedi predecessors are rolling in their tombs over that misuse of the Force,” Rey threads out, her voice as weak as her knees feel at this moment. She hears Kylo make some noise of agreement on his end, still winded from climax.  

 

\----

 

She totes the comm into the crew bunks, setting it on a shelf as she dresses for bed and continues to talk his ear off about the latest holobook she’s read - a history about the first Force adherents. For once, he actually has an active sense of participation in the conversation like they did when they were stuck on the _Falcon_ in the Prackla sector.

 

Then the talk turns to mechanics and Rey makes what she _thinks_ is a joke.

 

“If you’d ever drop this crusade against the dark by _being_ dark, you’re more than welcome to room with me on the _Falcon_. We could go set up a shop somewhere. Hang up the sabers,” she’s only halfway serious. The silence he treats her with on the line speaks volumes. She can feel his heart speed up from the picture her words paint from where she sits, lightyears away. 

 

“Are you getting excited over the notion of starting a junkyard with me, Ren?” 

 

“ _No!_ ” he hammers his fist against the chair he’s sitting in. 

 

\----

 

“So more to the point, where are you holed up for the foreseeable future?”

 

“Kuat,” he replies tersely, as it’s not a secret. 

 

Rey puts her back to the bulkhead near her bed, blowing sweat-soaked strands of hair out of her eyes.

 

“I imagine we’ll be seeing more of each other, then.”

 

\----

 

Kylo terminates the connection, unsure if he should be angry with himself or _her_ as he cleans his spend off of his hands with a towel from the ‘fresher. The drive yards loom outside of his room’s viewport - below the ring they form around the planet, Kuat glimmers in iridescent shades of jewel blue and green.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A BELATED CHAPTER. More on the way this weekend! Links below include what the fuck a Force bond is and the 'ability' Ben thinks Rey possesses in this fic. This is all wild speculation on my part, so take it with a grain of salt. 
> 
>    
>  [Force bond](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Force_bond)
> 
> [Battle Meditation](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_meditation)
> 
> [The Oyu'baat](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Oyu'baat)
> 
> [Niman source quote](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Form_VI/Legends)


	8. Form VII: Juyo

**Form VII - Juyo**

 

_“Juyo was described as the most vicious form of lightsaber combat, and was said to be filled with both fury and ‘malignant grace.’ The form was given the title of the most difficult and demanding form in all of saber combat. Skilled combatants with Juyo were said by Jedi Master Vrook Lamar to be able to ‘eviscerate a lone enemy.’ According to the Sith Lord Darth Traya, the form was both chaotic and erratic, with a heavy focus on offense. Juyo's use was controversial among the Jedi Order, as many felt that Juyo violated the ‘there is no emotion, there is peace’ tenet of the Jedi Code due to its requirement to fight under the guidance of controlled passion. The Sith had no such inhibition, and Darth Sidious went so far as to label it a ‘Sith style’.”_

 

 

 **T** he morning of the twentieth day of the First Order’s occupation of the Kuat sector begins much like any other. Kylo Ren wakes, checks the empty message box on his comm, stretches, meditates for a useless hour, then starts getting ready for another round of either inspections with Hux or negotiations with the Ten. Ree and Daala spearhead those efforts and stay dirtside for the majority of their days, returning to the _Vengeance_ or _Finalizer_ only for briefings. 

 

It’s slipped into the comfortable tedium of a routine. The Resistance has yet to show its face in the sector, stretched too thinly by the loses they took over Corellia. So they wait for the first sign of action and keep pressing the shipwrights for their due.

 

\----

 

Rey stares at her comm, halfway reaching for it before correcting her gesture. She steers her hand to her saber, laying a finger over the activation leaver. She’s paced a hole in the floor at this point, vacillating between being certain about her next course of action to crippling uncertainty about the outcome.

 

She reaches for the Force, but finds only roiling turmoil where her once calm lake usually rests within her mind. 

 

Adjusting her seat, Rey swerves the chair around in the cockpit of the _Falcon_ to tap out coordinates on the galaxy map.

 

\----

 

It’s almost two hours past midnight when Leia gets a firm knock on her door in Keldabe. She half expects Shysa with another harebrained scheme about running covert operations to cripple the First Order’s blockade in the Kuat system. Instead it’s Rey, looking worn and weighted down with _something_. Leia feels the cool ripple across her mind as their eyes lock.

 

“General, do you have a minute?” It’s the weakest her voice has ever sounded to Leia’s ears, uncertain and tremulous. It reminds her of Luke before Endor.

 

Rey tells her everything. The void that Han left will never close, but it starts to shrink. 

 

\----

 

Rey checks her systems for the umpteenth time, arguing with Chewie.

 

“ _You need more than backup for this,_ ” he growls out, gesticulating wildly with his fist at the current coordinates logged into the _Falcon’s_ computer. Leia is behind him, arms akimbo as her mouth firms into a thin, compressed line. It took more than a little convincing on Rey’s part to let her undertake this operation. The risk is high, but the payout promises to be bigger than any of them. Finn and Poe aren’t any the wiser and are currently occupied on the other end of the Resistance compound. The general and Chewie are the only two souls aware of what is going on at this point.

 

“If you’ve got a better alternative...” Rey trails off, twisting an overhead knob to bring on the sublight engines. 

 

“ _Hundreds! None involve this approach - it’s dangerous, he’s dangerous. You saw what he did to Han. I remember holding him when he had barely been breathing for an hour in this galaxy - you could say I know more about him, Rey. What he’s doing to you is manipulating the situation to make you believe he has it in him to kill Snoke - he could be playing you right into his hands under orders,_ ” Chewie’s tone manages to stay steady until the glottal, rasping speech catches around his memories of when Ben was a baby. Leia almost flinches. 

 

Rey pinches the bridge of her nose and wishes Chewie wouldn’t make so much damn _sense_. “I’m doing recon for the Resistance at the drive yards, firstly. Secondly, I’m either bringing him back breathing or in a body bag.”

 

\----

 

Chewie stalks off towards the garage, intercepting Poe and Finn as they come barreling over with BB-8. Their faces register a mix of shock and hurt as they watch Rey lift off. Leia watches the _Falcon_ break atmo from her quarters before turning to Artoo. She brings up the coordinates Chewie slipped to her months ago and starts keying up a recording for her twin. 

 

\----

 

Kuati politics are said to be labyrinthine. Kylo finds this much to be true while sitting in on another session of negotiations between the Ten, Senator Shesh, Moff Ree, General Hux, and Admiral Daala. While Daala and Ree do the majority of talking, Hux and himself are confined to sitting and saying absolutely nothing. 

 

The Ten, so named as they are the ten families that control every aspect of the Kuat sector, are represented by their individual matriarchs ranging in ages from girls barely out of their academy days to crones bent over with age. The planet was terraformed thousands of years ago by the original Ten into a matriarchal oligarchy and would remain so for the foreseeable future. Their main export was the First Order’s lifeblood - ships. 

 

“We offer all ships at the same price you commissioned them for,” Matriarch Danu states, flicking through a pile of flimsies, “with a nominal release fee of half their commissioning price for the trouble. The New Republic will come down hard on our system for negotiating with your kind instead of refusing to release these ships to the First Order. Your supreme leader must expect to extend some sort of compensation for demanding these ships early, and under what most would consider wartime conditions.” 

 

“Our funds cannot cover a fee of that magnitude without heavy lending from the banking guilds,” Ree exclaims once the matriarch from House Kuhlvult slides a flimsy with the invoice listed. “And this - this is just the five destroyers we commissioned at the start of last year. Let alone the _Eclipse_ project, which I’m sure is fifteen times this estimate. We paid full price on commission because the KDY has guaranteed top of the line ships for the past four thousand years without failure to deliver!”

 

“This was _before_ the First Order fired on the Hosnian system and created harsher conditions for us to fulfill the order under in the first place. We’re completing the order as we are still under contract - the KDY has yet to break a major contract and is unlikely ever to do so. Short of being incinerated,’’ Senator Shesh is careful to add the last bit, examining the immaculate points of her manicured fingernails. You’d need a magnifying glass to fully appreciate the amount of detail painted onto them.

 

Kuat Drive Yards, shortened as the KDY, has been producing ships for millennia under the strict hand of the Ten. The massive drive yards, known as the KDY orbital array, girded the sector’s capital planet, Kuat. The zero gravity environment enabled the construction of bigger, grander ships versus the terrestrial Corellian drive yards of the CEC. 

 

Kylo hears Hux scoff to his immediate left. “Any increase in fees is scalping us. We’re only asking for those ships to be released a few months ahead of schedule,” says the general from his chair in the back of the room.

 

All of the Ten turn simultaneously to look at Hux as if he’s grown a second head. 

 

“You’ll have to forgive the general. He’s unfamiliar with having women lead the conversation as dictated by your culture’s protocol,” Ree begs off the speculative stares. Kylo thinks that Daala’s head might twist off her spine if she turns any further to level a _look_ at the general sitting behind her. Hux turns an interesting shade of purple and Kylo relaxes into his chair. 

 

\----

 

She breaks out of hyperspace past the orbital array, hauling up at the control yoke to bring the _Falcon_ out of the sudden dive. It’s harder when you’re short a copilot, but she manages. Barely. 

 

Kuat’s grassy plains and sprawling mesas rear up in the viewport, too close, _way too close_. She levels out of the dive, steering the ship around a rocky outcropping. Jungle carpets the plains beneath her in generous swathes, cut through with wide river deltas. Rey finds a big enough space to land that only involves a little scraping against tall saplings, powering down the sublight engines.

 

 _Then_ she checks the transponder and readouts. No sudden fluxes of activity near her - she’s gotten through largely undetected thanks to Han’s moves.

 

“Way to fly, old girl,” Rey pats a hand on the console. She could swear the sensor light above winks at her.   

 

\----

 

He wakes up with a start, sheets of sweat pouring off of him. Kylo takes in a deep inhale and holds it, reaffirming where he is. The starchy stretch of his bedsheets flex under his grip, reassuringly familiar. He’s in his quarters on the _Finalizer_. Yet it’s the same dream again. He’s in the cockpit in his father’s chair, guiding the _Falcon_ down to gently touch the field beneath. Rey is saying something in his ear, a warm weight leaning on him as she guides him through the maneuver. Then he wakes.

 

Kylo swings his legs over the edge of his bed, standing to stretch. He’s grateful for the allowance of a larger, roomier unit. It opens on an unfurnished common room, a place with no particular function save to house his armory and the locked pod with his grandfather’s ruined mask. Attached to that room is a more furnished office that leads to very spartan sleeping quarters with a big enough bed and wardrobe, a ‘fresher attached to that - all done in the same drab grey and black as the rest of the ship. The room sits at the end of what is called the Officer’s Row - the long corridor of rooms for the higher ranking officials onboard the _Finalizer_. His layout sits in some secluded corner, away from the rest. He’s glad for the distinction. 

 

He stumbles blindly into the ‘fresher, not yet ready to turn on the lights that will saturate the room and ruin the warm haze of sleep still shrouding his mind. He strips and wedges the bulk of his body into the shower stall.

 

It isn’t until the water hits his face that he realizes that Rey’s half of the link is unusually silent. It’s as if she’s deliberately cloaked herself, the absence cutting deep. He reaches out, but meets only silence. Later, any effort to do so through the comm is met with the same silence and static on her end.

 

He starts to worry. 

 

\----

 

Kuat City echoes the architecture of the orbital drive yards with its many spired towers and elegant high-rises. 

 

The orbital array has a habit of blocking out a strip of sunlight around high noon on Kuat, throwing half of the city into shadow and the other half into light. Kylo is busy contemplating a sculpture that is thrown into odd relief by the effects of the manmade eclipse, marching by with a full squadron of stormtroopers towards another meeting with the Ten.

 

They’re being worn down, gradually. Daily, Daala and Ree come to them and ask for a firm deadline for the completion of the _Eclipse_ project. And every day, the Ten reply _not yet_. 

 

The First Order is at the mercy of these people, unfortunately. While the bulk of the ship may be completed alongside with the other star destroyers they’d commissioned, the finishing touches such as testing the weapon systems, gravity wells, and shielding of each ship could only be done in the Kuati facilities that accommodate ships of their size.

 

“We’re receiving reports that a YT-1300f light freighter uncloaked somewhere around the equatorial regions,” the one with the radio pipes up before they reach the corporate sector. He freezes.

 

The water near him ripples. His squadron has to jog to keep up with his strides as he makes for the command shuttle at the spaceport.

 

“Send word to Admiral Daala - I’m inspecting Resistance activity in that area and expect to be back by the night cycle,” he barks at the commander. The trooper salutes, taking the squadron with him as Kylo Ren breaks off from the group.

 

\----

 

He feels her before he sees her, per the usual. The command shuttle touches down near a delta in the depths of the equatorial jungle. The heat is oppressive, but bearable. He engages the ramp and stalks down, already highly agitated by the mere presence of _Rey_.

 

The bond has a way of fluctuating between them. Either her proximity is as soothing as a balm after being stretched tight by the distance between them or fire-hot as a brand whenever they’re within earshot of one another.

 

It’s favoring the latter, the closer he gets to her. He’s slogging through boggy ground near some fragging waterfall when she gets the drop on him. Her feet hit the mossy ground about five meters behind him, sending a ripple that makes him ignite his saber on instinct. The wave of the Force she sends nearly upends him, but he digs his stubbornness in along with his heels and manages to keep his footing. 

 

He can’t quite put his finger on why they either fight or fuck when they first lay eyes on one another after a period of time. But today is most definitely for fighting.

 

\----

 

“Rey,” he sounds like he’s begging her. 

 

The wet rocks are bitting into her back. Water is sloshing up to their calves, murky and teeming with fish. One brave minnow darts in to nibble at the tip of her boot, unaware of what the two larger beings are doing while making such a ruckus in their tranquil pond. The waterfall pounds in her ears, far enough away but close enough to cover their speech if they speak too lowly.

 

They’ve fought until both of them are winded, which isn’t hard to do in this heat. His robes sag with moisture and every inch of her clothing is plastered to her frame with either sweat or water. Their sabers are locked nearly to the blade emitter shroud of her saber - his doesn’t have that safeguard. The quillons burn bright and hot near her collarbones. 

 

Rey is the one that kills the beam of her saber first. The shock of the blade dying leaves no force to hold up his own, but he’s quick to check it and kill the unstable saber’s beam before it can slice into the rock and Rey. It leaves him pressed against her, his visored view hovering just a hair’s breadth above the top of her head - even then, he’s stooping. They’re crowded into a natural corner of the rock, out of sight from the shore of the small cove.

 

It’s peaceful, this. Rey lets her brow press against the heated sheet of metal framing where his mouth would be, trying to slow her breathing to anything but the loud, echoing pants her lungs are demanding. She registers the same sound coming out of his voice modulator. His hands span against the rock, too large - hers find the folds of his robes and root themselves there.

 

Her mouth presses against the scarred durasteel before his mask lowers to wedge against her neck in the closest approximation of an embrace he can manage in full armor. Soon she’s spun around and bodily bent by his hands at her neck, all the tenderness evaporating in the wake of the heat. Her hands soak up the chill of the rock, palms flat as her legs spread. His fingers, still gloved, dip past the waistband of her pants and Rey can feel the slow drip of the water on the rocks above beading down her exposed back when he sinks two fingers to the knuckle in her cunt. She hears the sharp inhale from his modulator when he finds her drenched.

 

“It’s a wonder we made it through all that without doing this,” she gasps. She isn’t sure if it’s purely _them_ or the bond that enforces the need for touch - if it is the bond, the implications of how _deep_ it will run if they do consummate this frighten her. The wounds they scored on one another that burn in the night, the sympathetic echo of pain - what if he died? What if _she_ died? Would the bond simply snap and allow the other half of the connection to go on living, or would it trend towards an absolute?

 

“I don’t know,” he answers her unspoken questions against her throat. He sounds as uncertain as she feels.

 

Rey feels him withdraw, fumbling with the fastenings of his robe and trousers. Then the heavy, hot length of his cock slips out past the cloth to press against her thigh and her vision blurs at the edges from how badly she wants this. His fingers are still gloved, cool leather on hot skin as he hooks her underwear aside to slide a thumb over her clit. Rey chokes on her own voice - he presses another hand to her mouth and she finds silence by biting down on the heel of his palm.

 

He hesitates, his hands seizing her hips to keep her still. “What are you waiting on,” she grits out. If she bucks back, she’ll sink onto him and all of this stalling would be over in a mere pinch of discomfort. 

 

“Not here, not like this,” he manages to sound like he’s under great strain, the water around them sloshing as he backs off a step. When he tucks himself back into his robes and refastens his belt, Rey nearly wants to scream.

 

\----

 

“What are you _doing_ here?” he finally barks out once he’s gotten her on the command shuttle. It didn’t take a bit of convincing or coercion. For once, she _followed_ him step by step. 

 

“Feeding intelligence reports to your mother, of course,” she replies, tugging off her boot to upend the contents onto the ship’s deck. A small amphibian is dumped out with the mix of brackish water and pebbles. He wants to throw up his hands once Rey plucks the damn creature up, totes it over to the ramp, and sets it on the jungle floor before returning to the confines of the ship to repeat the same procedure with her other waterlogged boot, sans lifeforms this time.

  
He should correct her. Ben Solo is the son of Leia Organa. Kylo Ren is the only one standing before her now, and he has no parent, no weakening _ties-_

 

“Stop that,” she says testily. His train of thought runs parallel to her own, making his stream of conscious tangible to her. “You _are_ her son, like it or not. Stubbornly so.”

 

“Her son wasn’t mired in the dark side of the Force. Not when she raised me, not when she last saw me,” he hisses out, finally stripping off his helm.

 

“You killed your own _father_ and that still didn’t push you fully into the dark - I wouldn’t go so far as to call yourself _mired_ in the dark side,” she rallies, wringing out water from her tunic.

 

\----

 

They finally stop fighting long enough to formulate a plan.

 

“There’s no time like the present. And we won’t have to nearly kill each other like last time. He believes I’m coming willingly,” he hears her rummaging around behind him, the soft slide of cloth on skin. She joins him in the copilot’s chair, her appearance downright jarring. Without much preamble or wasting time in the ‘fresher, Rey has ditched her soaked things for a plain black uniform and shined boots from a footlocker near the aft of the shuttle - standard issue BDUs for officers. She’s hauling her hair into a strict knot at the nape of her neck, tucking it all under a smartly pressed officer's cap.

 

“The black is very fitting on you,” he quips. She points the hilt of her saber at his face.

 

“Shut up and fly,” she orders, tucking the saber beneath the waistband of her pants. She obscures it by looping it under her belt before smoothing the folds of the uniform’s tunic over it, relaxing back into the seat as they start the prelaunch checks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Kuat](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kuat/Legends)
> 
> [Viqi Shesh](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Viqi_Shesh)
> 
> [The Eclipse](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Eclipse-class_dreadnought)
> 
> [Juyo quote source](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Form_VII/Legends)


	9. Form VII: Vaapad

**Form VII - Vaapad**

 

_“In the later days of the Old Republic, a new variation of Form VII, dubbed Vaapad after a creature native to the planet Sarapin, was created by Jedi Masters Mace Windu and Sora Bulq. Vaapad was explained as being a state of mind rather than just a fighting style, allowing the wielder to channel his own inner darkness into the duel, and accept the fury of the opponent.”_

 

 **“W** ell I didn’t foresee him bringing _that_ on board when he said he was inspecting Resistance activity,” Daala says to Ree. She hands over the ever-present cup of caf to her peer as they eye the vid feed dubbed Hanger 9 from the _Finalizer_ \- where Kylo Ren houses his _Upsilon_ -class command shuttle for ops. 

 

They’re comfortably ensconced on the command bridge of the _Vengeance,_ engaged presently in its pendulous orbit around one of Kuat’s two moons - Bador. The _Eclipse_ dominates the view outside of the forward viewport, shrouded by a few smaller star destroyers that patrol it like a school of silvery fish.  

 

“Is that a _girl_?” Ree asks, incredulous. Her crewmen know better than to look up when she is engaged in something like this. If anything, they bend to their tasks like it’s their lifeline and shutter their hearing to avoid letting anything truly too good not to gossip about slip into their ears. 

 

Ree has never seen Kylo Ren close to anything even resembling a social function, even on the capital world. He is seen by most as something completely robotic and free of the constraints of basic human interaction. Very much like his grandfather. This sight in front of her flies in the face of everything she knows about the man.

 

“If I’m a judge of the female species, yes. It’s a girl,” Daala provides, switching the feed to follow the pair down various corridors. 

 

“It's no one from the _Finalizer_ that I recognize. A lieutenant - and I know just about every woman that's managed to attain rank on that ship. She’s not going to the prison block or the interrogation cells - freeze the frame,” Ree touches the hologram and takes a deep inhale.

 

“It’s the general’s aide,” Daala murmurs in surprise once the screen solidifies on a clear image of the girl.

 

“So she’s a sleeper agent I’m to assume? That or we’re watching high treason in realtime.”

 

“Considering how Ren is, I’d tend to think this little interaction is leaning more towards the former rather than the latter. I don’t think he has much to go back _to_ if he were to become a turncoat.”  

 

“A very long trial and his own mother ordering his execution is what he has to go back to,” Ree agrees, tilting her cup to her mouth.

 

“So what do we do?” Daala asks, casting a glance at the _Finalizer_ as it drifts into the starboard viewport. 

 

“We’re not telling Hux, for one. Two, it’s probably some secret order drivel that the Knights of Ren are embroiled in by order of the supreme leader. Ergo none of our damn business.”

  
“And that is our cue to pretend we never saw this,” finishes Daala, turning off the feed that shows Kylo Ren escorting the girl straight to the Officer’s Row. 

 

\----

 

“By the way you’re hurrying down this hallway, people would think we’ve got something to hide,” she says under her breath. They slow their steps as a stormtrooper squad passes. They pass another corridor and work their way inward. 

 

“We do. You’re not recognizable as part of this ship’s crew,” he explains, ducking around another corridor. He leads her to a turbolift bank, jabbing in access codes on the keypad before they start to rise, steadily. Rey feels sweat start to form beneath the tight, high collar of the uniform.

 

And of course, the worst does happen. General Hux steps on at the bridge level, looking like he’s just saw something very distasteful crawl out of some hole in the ground once his eyes land on Kylo Ren.

 

“Lord Ren,” he drones in greeting. Then his eyes land on Rey and narrow almost imperceptibly, noting the decor on her chest. “Lieutenant,” he trails off, uncertain of her surname. 

 

Rey lacks one, so her mouth speeds up ahead of her, hoping the Imperial lilt of her accent would cover for her. “-merely visiting from the _Vengeance_ , sir. Lord Ren is borrowing me from Admiral Daala for the remainder of the talks.” The lift doors close and they slowly begin to ascend. 

 

“Borrowing,” Hux says, not sounding the least convinced. His eyes train on her face a little while longer, finally surpassing the mark where it’s socially acceptable to keep staring. Recognition flares in his eyes. He lifts a hand to the blaster belted to his side. Rey feels Kylo’s arm tighten near her.

 

Rey raises her hand in front of Hux and prays for his sake that his will is weak enough.

 

“You do not recognize me. You will get off at the next floor and return to your rounds. You never saw either of us,” she forces the reality of her words into his mind, feeling them sink in before they root and form solid images around her suggestions.

 

“I do not recognize you. I will get off at the next floor and return to my rounds. I never saw either of you,” he intones, his expression slack. The lift stops with a humming _ting_ and Hux’s body marches out like an automaton. 

 

Rey collapses against the durasteel paneling of the lift’s walls.

 

“I’ve never been able to do that to him,” Kylo wonders aloud at her side, slightly mystified by the whole exchange. His arm relaxes and the grip he had on his saber goes slack.

 

\----

 

After what feels like hours, they arrive at his rooms. He steers her past the common room where nothing is quite common, ignoring her persistent questions about the locked case containing the burned remains of Vader’s mask. Dinner is coaxed from a food processor hidden in the panelling of his office walls. 

 

Rey untucks her hair from the cap she stuffed it under, shaking it loose before she digs a fork into what she thinks is some form of meat dish. “Hopefully the Kuati won’t find the _Falcon_ and turn it into scrap.”

 

“Highly doubtful, though I imagine you wouldn’t be that hard-pressed to find another ship.” The hiss of his mask unhinging makes her look up. He runs a hand through his hair and contemplates joining her, but decides that the knot his stomach is tied into won’t lend to a decent appetite. 

 

Rey looks at him, her fork falling back to her plate in her slack grip. “Are you joking? That ship is the closest thing I have to a home.”

 

“Perhaps I misspoke,” he admits after her words strike too deep at something in him.

 

\----

 

After dinner, he extends her rights to the first shower and she takes the offer without a second thought. He lets Rey into his sleeping quarters, busying himself with something on his terminal in the office. She slips into the room that is probably the closest approximation to the only private place he can call his own in the entire galaxy. It’s bleak. Only a bed, a wardrobe, and a viewport that swallows the only outward facing wall. The view of the stars are dizzying - she has to look away because of the sense of vertigo the viewport is giving her, finding it hard to imagine that he sleeps when a solid wall in his room looks like the vacuum of space is ready to swallow everything.

 

Rey rummages around in his wardrobe, trying to invade his privacy as little as she already has before - _aha!_

 

She takes the pilfered piece of clothing to the ‘fresher, stripping out of the officer’s uniform before folding it into a crisp, orderly square for tomorrow. Rey sets the boots on the lid of the toilet after kicking it down, already halfway into the shower stall. Finding a nook near her to store her saber is easy, as there’s about two ledges balancing a couple of bottles of bathing products around her. She pops one open and discovers the source of where the heavy, spice-laden scent of his hair comes from. Rey nearly laughs herself hoarse at the absurdity of it all.

 

The hot water pounds on the aches in her shoulder, a mark of permanent strain from living in a pilot’s chair. She looks at the buildup of calluses along her hands and wonders what Old Traz is doing on Jakku this very minute - still scrubbing metal parts in what remains of Nima Outpost. Where Rey would still be if none of this had happened.

 

She tries to cast her mind out to the place where she grew up. The heat of the water is a mere echo of the sun on her back, branding her skin like the ground beneath her soles. She comes back to herself when she feels Kylo nudge at her mind, the sand beneath her feet solidifying into black tile. Rey turns off the steady stream of water.

 

\----

 

When Rey pads softly out of his room in a shirt he hasn’t seen in five years, let alone knew _still existed_ somewhere in a drawer, he’s struck by the innate sense that this is the first time he’s ever let a woman this far into his quarters. This close to him. 

 

Rey wrings out her hair and the light from his terminal catches on the soft blue fabric of his old shirt - it swallows her frame and comes nearly down to her knees.

 

“I wasn’t going to sleep in the uniform,” she tells him matter-of-factly, his gaze returning to her face.

 

\----

 

He hasn’t said a word to her since she walked out of the ‘fresher. He types for a few more furtive minutes while she finds a serviceable blanket in a wall drawer. Suddenly the typing stops, she turns, and he’s gone. Only the slow closing door to his sleeping chambers gives her an idea of where he’s run off to. 

 

Rey tries her hardest to will her body to sleep on the long couch in his office. It’s passably comfortable, the lights are turned low, and there is no noise distracting her from sleep. Everything leads up to her being _able_ to sleep but her mind will not switch off. 

 

“Oh, kriff it,” she mutters to the ceiling. She kicks off the blanket and lets her feet touch the cool floor beneath the couch.

 

\----

 

Any effort he makes to sleep with her this close and _not sleeping herself_ is useless.

 

His eyes crack open when he hears the hiss of his door opening. Soft, light-footed strides bring her to the edge of his bed, her form leaning over him. He tenses. She sets his grandfather’s saber next to his on the ledge of the headboard, just within both their reaches. 

 

“If I’m going to die in the next few days, I’m doing it on a full night’s rest,” she says to his blank look once he opens his eyes fully. 

 

“I can take the couch, if that’s the point you’re trying to make.” 

 

“Don’t be a prude. Wasn’t it you that said _something, something_ no privacy between us? This won’t be the first time we’ve slept together, in the strictest sense.”

 

Rey worms her way between the covers, laying on the very edge of the bed. Away from him.

 

Then he reaches for her.

 

\----

 

“You’re not going to die,” he says against her throat an hour later. She’s spent it with his head tucked under her chin, halfway draped over his body while staring out the viewport. The closeness dulls the ache between them some, but not entirely. Rey feels it as keen as a knife in her chest. Rey rights herself and straddles his hips to hover her face directly over his own.

 

\----

 

“You’re a liar, Ben Solo,” she says, low and sure. It’s the first time she’s said his name to his face. He flushes hot, so damn thankful that he’s scrambled his room’s feed to a near intelligible garble to the bugs no doubt placed throughout. What’s coming out of her mouth is treason. The supreme leader himself made his old name taboo to speak, even from his own mouth. Another way to scratch out the boy he’d been.

 

\----

 

He fills in the gaps of silence that follows her declaration by smoothing his hands up her legs, marveling at the span of her waist made small by his hands and how high his old shirt rides up her thighs. Then he plucks the tightened points of her breasts through the thin material of her shirt, and her entire body _shakes_. His body rears up as if bidden by instinct, setting his back against the headboard so he can get at her mouth in the low light of his bedroom.

 

\----

 

“Wet,” he almost says it like a swear once his fingers curl into her cunt. Rey scrubs her hands through his hair, working herself into a fit by staying as perfectly still as she can while he thumbs her clit, fitting another finger deep into the heat of her. His mouth circles a nipple, drawing it tight beneath the material of his shirt as he sucks. Rey has to stop her arms from shaking by setting them firmly on his shoulders. Was it possible just to come from _this_? Likely. Gradually layers shed, his pants lost to the floor along with his _scavenged_ shirt. The bond flares as Rey's hot, small hands wraps around his cock and she has to bite his lip to keep him from jerking in her grip.

 

\----

 

He bucks up, his motions blind. He can make out every detail because the light of the stars from his viewport throws every line of her face and body into sharp relief. Her lower lips, thick with blood, finally envelop him and he’s left to die a slow, good death as she feeds his cock into her body, inch by inch. He can’t find where his eyes should settle - her face, twisted in an expression of pain and wonder, or where they’re joined, the slow slide of flesh joining flesh as her cunt grips him. Finally he hilts in her heat, the act itself tearing a noise out of his throat.

 

"O-oh, fuck," she stutters into his mouth. The second time he's coaxed the word out of her.

 

The bond hums.

 

\----

 

Rey doesn’t know what to expect from having a man in her. From this angle, it’s intimidating. The blunt, uncompromising heat of the head of his cock nudges against her clit, catching before she sinks back onto him. There’s no stopping once she starts sliding down the thick of him - a bright burst of pain halfway through that dulls the further she chases the edge of something more, something elusive as the Force rolls up her spine like a wave. 

 

She’s just never felt so _full_ in her entire life and the sounds she’s making are hysterically loud in this quiet, dark room. The sensation of his hipbones pressing into the undersides of her thighs registers as she hovers over him, finally digging in when he bottoms out.

 

The bond thrums. It isn’t the wild emptying of his mind into hers like the previous encounters have led her to believe are commonplace. It’s only a deep resonance of something in her connecting with something in him, straining tenuous and thin. But _there_.

 

\----

 

Where she leads, he follows. Rey learns herself in the steady rise and fall of her hips, a casual canting that brings her body to a perfect angle over his own as she grips the headboard to fuck herself on his cock. The sounds are wet, filthy - it brands her cheeks nearly blood red just hearing them and sends his pulse spiking to unnatural levels.

 

She nearly kills him when he hooks his fingers into her mouth, sucking with such a furor that it drives him harder into her. A mad scramble and suddenly he has her on her back, _finally -_ the deeper angle he strokes within her while her ankles lock somewhere behind his neck make his vision spot. He nearly bends the metal of the headboard. Their sabers rattle against one another from the force of how hard his hands are shaking. He finds his knees and digs in. Rey _keens_.

 

\----

 

“Rey,” he murmurs into her mouth. Sweat is slicking both their bodies, the chill of the ship’s recycled air cooling them. They’re clumsy, imperfect - the ill-timed movement of their bodies at first lead to him having to nudge his cock back into her on more than one occasion. But she discovers how clever his fingers can be between them when she guides them to her clit, overworked and swollen. The slow, steady friction of him in her coupled with the gentle heel of his hand pressing against her pubic bone brings her off so hard and so sudden that he has to pull out, leaving her empty and clenching.

 

“Because,” he pants against her throat, the rest ringing in her mind. _This can’t end yet._ His mouth leaves marks where his grip doesn’t as she comes down - half-moons on her breasts, her stomach, her neck. She feels like he’s desperate to leave some signature trace of himself long after he’s gone, and it makes her seize up almost in fear of what might happen. But he senses it and soothes it away with his mouth, for what good are dark siders if they don’t hone in on the emotions that feed them?

 

\----

 

Finally, he guides himself back in when the full-bodied shudder of her climax dulls into just tiny jerks of muscle along her thighs. And still, it’s too much for him. When her nails score down his back to dig into his ass, echoed by the sharp rejoinder of her heels cinching in to pull him in _deep_ , he has to come. “ _Ben_ ,” she keens against his throat. He jerks, feeling like this has been wrenched out of him by this girl, this scavenger. Rey. It goes on forever, spilling into her as his sounds spill into her mouth. Rey catches the noises between a slow, purling grin he can’t help but feel weak at seeing.

 

When he finally softens and slips out of her, he has to physically keep his hands planted on the warped headboard at the sight of his seed beading down her long thighs.

 

\----

 

The light is low in the room when the tempest they make of each other finally dies down by some measure.

 

“If you open your mouth and tell me about how this changes nothing, I’ll fight you,” she whispers against his chest. Without answering her, he hauls her up and crowds her body to the edge of the bed, curling around her. He finds some sort of sanctuary in the curve of her neck and the shroud her hair makes over his face. 

 

Rey is dwarfed by how big his body is next to hers. His hands alone are covering the entirety of her midsection. She finds a calm radiating off of him that she’s never felt before.

 

She smiles at the far winking constellation in the viewport that she recognizes as the Western Reaches.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE.
> 
> A double post to kick the week off right, plus the Reylo smut this fic has been building up towards. 
> 
> This chapter is brought to you by [this lovely 8 track inspired by Forms](http://8tracks.com/calyxofawildflower/forms) that [Calyxofawildflower](http://archiveofourown.org/users/whisperthroughthewall/profile) rocked my socks off with.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> [Vaapad quote source](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Form_VII/Legends)


	10. Sith Form: Dun Möch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that I've reworded minor lines in prior chapters - nothing critical, just everything implying that Kylo Ren is a full-fledged Sith since that's contrary to the current canon. Sally forth!

**Sith Form: Dun Möch**

 

_“Dun Möch was a form of combat that used distraction and doubt, usually through taunting, in conjunction with lightsaber combat. The Sith aimed to completely dominate an opponent's spirit through whatever means possible by employing their own lightsaber combat doctrine. Dun Möch commonly involved spoken taunts, jeers, and jests that exposed the opponent's hidden, inner weaknesses and/or doubts, which had the end result of eroding the opponent's will. Mental attacks would also be utilized during combat in order to strip one's concentration with the Force, making an opponent less precise and effective. Such a thing could be quite deadly, especially against Jedi, since concentration was of vital importance when using the Force. As such, Dun Möch embodied using the Force as a form of psychological warfare.”_

 

 **T** he deep keel of the _Eclipse_ -class super star destroyer engulfs her view of a small nebula to the far right of Illum’s orbit. Just beyond the pull of the planet’s twin moons, it circles like a slow-moving chrono hand and helps Rey keep track of the time. She’s disassembled her saber, cleaning parts of the emitter shroud as the crystal circles her head. Asar is a weak dwarf star that barely puts off enough heat to keep a room warm, much less a whole system - it smolders far, far away. Rey can hold up a thumb and completely obscure it from where she sits on the bed.

 

“You slept like the dead,” she tells Kylo once he cracks an eye open. Five days and neither of them had left his rooms while the _Finalizer_ was en route to the seat of the Supreme Leader in the Unknown Regions. They’d arrived just as the day cycle was starting, having to overuse the sublight engines for the last leg of the journey since the hyperlane of the Way of Schesa stretched days away from the Illum system for ships traveling at sublight speed. 

 

This truly was deep space, isolated and foreign. 

 

There’s an excess of dreadnoughts and light cruisers flocked around a startling number of star destroyers. Some are the newer variety churned out by the KDY and CDC, others older holdouts from the Galactic Empire. “What are they gathering for?” Rey asks him, glancing up from the parts of her saber spread across his bedsheets. 

 

“The Chiss Ascendancy fleet’s arrival. They’ll rendezvous near the Redoubt and make a push towards Mandalore to finish off what’s left of the Resistance fleet. After that, there’s no standing military between the Order and the Republic. They’ll move inward and overtake the Core.” He starts rummaging around the edge of the bed for his trousers, already feeling dread knot in his stomach. This was the day.

 

“That’s the first time you’ve said that," she says off-handedly.

 

At his raised eyebrow, Rey explains, “Referred to the Order as _them_ and not _we_.” Rey finally works a catch in her saber’s hilt free, the spare space below the diatium power battery just large enough to secret a small, round disc away. She upends it into her hand. 

 

The transponder chip lets out a cheerful _peep_ as it relays her latest position through the nearest comm buoy. It’s been doing it every hour on the hour since she left the _Falcon_ on Kuat.

 

“Plan beta?” Kylo asks, raking a hand through his hair as he sits up. The sheets pool in his lap. Rey answers him with a small smile. If he wasn’t already resolved to follow through with this, he certainly was grounded by the way she looked at him.

 

She’d dragged him back, kicking and screaming. Not to the light, but that burning line that defined the middle.

 

“Plan beta.” Rey turns her eyes on the boots and muted grey of the clothing they’d managed to nick for her. She starts reassembling her saber. 

 

\----

 

Luke Skywalker touches his fingers briefly to his sister’s upturned face in _Home One_ ’s hanger. They’ve spoken little this past week - his reappearance after Ahch-To sent ripples through the Resistance. A living legend among them, it bolstered morale to an all-time high not seen since before the First Order’s destruction of the Hosnian system. 

 

Finally, he breaks away after touching his forehead briefly to his twin's, saying something too low for most to hear. Whatever it is, it lifts some unseen weight off of Leia’s shoulders. Chewie stops maintenance on a crippled shuttle to come stand with her.

 

Leia finally speaks after Luke's shuttle eases out into the void - despite the fact that they’ve now got a couple of hundred meters between them as the shuttle pulls out of the hanger and barriers separating the sound, she knows Luke can hear her. “Bring them back.”

 

\----

 

The sensors don’t pick up what’s happening until the forces are well into the Illum system. The _Eclipse’s_ crew notices it first, small pings off the comm buoys that show an anomaly approaching from the hyperlane. General Hux is aboard, overseeing weapons testing. Soon they materialize, a massive fleet approaching from the lee of the system's star.

 

“The Consortium fleet? _How,_ ” grits out Hux once an ensign brings up a visual of the unfamiliar hulls of destroyers. He counts about eighty and feels sweat bead under his collar.  

 

\----

 

Weeks ago, Leia Organa took a hold of Prince Isolder’s weathered hands, a man still so handsome after all these years. They met at her request in her private office suite the day after he and his manifold flock of nobles arrive from the Empress Teta system in the inner core. The First Order’s delegation was due to arrive any day.   

 

“I’m needing a favor from you and your mother, for old time’s sake,” she started. Isolder furrowed his brow, leaning in to listen to the princess he lost to a scoundrel. 

 

\----

 

Admiral Daala, a woman rarely inclined to show surprise, lets out a profoundly loud, emphatic “ ** _FUCK_** _!_ ” that is heard all the way down on the engineering deck of the _Vengeance_ once the approach of the Hapan Royal Navy and Resistance fleet registers on the sensors. 

 

Everything is rapidly scrambled before the first bombardment hits one unsuspecting destroyer. The idling shields are shredded in seconds before the star destroyer plummets towards one of Illum's twin moons.

 

\----

 

A tandem X-wing starfighter is a modified T-65 X-wing that seats two in a roomier cockpit. It boasts seven sublight engines instead of the usual four and hosts a frightening amount of shielding on its forward array.  It can hold one pilot, one copilot behind him, and an astromech droid in the aft droid port. 

 

“Black leader standing by,” Poe says over the fleet-wide comm. He hears Finn behind him engage the S-foils. BB-8 hunkers in and starts prepping for the maintenance they’ll no doubt be in dire need of once the droid spots a wing of TIE interceptors swarm out of the drop hanger on the _Eclipse_.   

 

\----

 

“WHERE IS REN?” screams Hux once the _Eclipse_ loses its forward shielding. They’re losing ten ships to every two the Resistance has. They weren’t ready. Their defenses were weak and there was surely a traitor in their midsts if a fleet of this size could’ve tailed them from the Core with intelligence and sensors being none the wiser.

 

“His shuttle is inbound to the temple. Probably to evacuate the Supreme Leader,” Grand Admiral Sloane’s reply is even-keeled and calm, her eyes level with the current readouts of loses and traffic inbound to the planet-side base. She starts weighing her options.

 

\----

 

Illum is an icy world, barren save for the howling wind and jagged outcroppings of rock that split through the permafrost. When Kylo sets down the _Upsilon_ -class shuttle at the landing zone. The confusion and chaos around the Supreme Leader’s base is so great that the pair go largely unnoticed. The First Order is too focused on mobilizing the AT-ATs and ion cannons, already anticipating a ground assault with the oncoming deployment of transport barges from the Resistance fleet. 

 

They start towards the temple set far back behind the military installations. 

 

\----

 

This place must have once been a grand temple for the Jedi, a crystal nursery with craggy stalagmites. It’s filled with the sound of melting runoff slowly carving paths through the rock. The saturation of dark side energies is so strong that it nearly forces him out, the cave on Dagobah paling in comparison to the feeling clawing up his throat. 

 

Luke Skywalker feels the flicker of Rey and his nephew at the edge of his mind and follows their signatures inward. 

 

\----

 

“Uncle,” is all he can manage once the green glow of a saber cuts down a knight advancing on him. They’ve killed one a piece and incapacitated the remaining three guarding the central chamber. The Jedi extends a hand towards him to help him up. He takes it.

 

\----

 

Snoke isn’t anything like she expected. He isn’t gargantuan or the least bit looming like the rumors make him out to be - a mere skeleton in dark robes. The distinct smell of something rotting in this wet, empty cave he sits in permeates her senses. Something terrible lives here, predating all things. Rey sees it in his face when she ignites the beam of her saber alongside her master’s. 

 

The creature, because it’s not even vaguely humanoid to her senses, starts to laugh when he takes in the sight of the trio standing before him. Then he starts to stand and Rey realizes that despite all appearances to the contrary, they might be outmatched. 

 

\----

 

The familiar tug of his master attempting to bend his mind urges him to turn his saber on Rey. 

 

Only it’s weak - fleeting. Rey and the brighter burning presence of his uncle mute the threads of dark that reach out for him. Suddenly it narrows in on Rey and Kylo realizes that he’s done something unspeakable. 

 

_He’s brought the girl to him._

 

\----

 

Rey feels that savage, hungry thing in her chest once Snoke stands from his throne. He’s such a small, crippled thing. His brow sags as if the bone beneath it is eroding. He turns his eyes on Rey and she sees the true dark. 

 

\----

 

Kylo and her master try to pull their blows until they realize she won’t, _can’t_ pull away from the dark. It dominates her mind and floods her veins with power the likes of which she’s never felt in her life. It’s intoxicating, this void welling within her. 

 

They score blows on each other that should be mortal, but adrenaline and the Force puppet them along.

 

\----

 

Luke’s robes crumple, supported by nothing as the strike severs his head from his neck. She can hear Kylo screaming at her to wake up and Rey comes back to herself, tears streaking her face. She’s holding her master’s saber and her own. Snoke hasn’t moved and as she realizes that time is telescoping down into spotty, black patches - her feet are turning to advance on Kylo. 

 

 _Wake up, Rey_ , someone wills in her mind.

 

“Your replacement surpasses your skills, my young apprentice,” Snoke demurs, finding his seat once more. His overconfidence in his power is what gets him killed when Kylo breaches the barrier around him to bury his blade through his caved-in chest.

 

Rey wakes.

 

\----

 

“I’m reminded of a phrase Wilhuff once told me when I was fresh out of the academy on Carida,” Daala says to the viewport facing her, white-knuckling the console’s edge where she stands. Ciena is similarly losing color in her cheeks as they watch the _Eclipse_ ’s orbit decay until its edges blaze like a comet, the keel of the ship dipping into low atmo as it slices towards the southernmost reaches of Illum. The ship is in an uncontrolled dive and escape pods are jettisoning off from the port and starboard sides of the ship like parasites jumping off a dying host.

 

It’s nauseating to watch thirty billion credits crash headlong into a planet.

 

“What’s that?” Ciena asks, distracted by the sight before her and no doubt reliving her crash with the _Inflictor_ when she scuttled her on Jakku.

 

“Ma’am, Grand Admiral Sloane is giving the orders for surrender,” shouts a comm technician. His headset shorts out as another blast to their forward shields shorts out some of the bridge’s systems. They’re jolted forward and about a third of them end up on the deck.

 

Daala maintains her balance, gritting her teeth as she hammers her fist on the console. “ _The only words which have meaning are the last ones spoken,_ ” she quotes, low enough for only Ciena to hear her. 

 

“Power down the sublight engines to idle. I’m ending this before we’re all blown to fine particle matter,” Daala shouts, already throwing open the channel to create a link with _Home One_.

 

They pick up after the second ping, of course. 

 

“Organa, I’d like to start off this surrender by saying you’re certainly your father’s daughter by engineering this ruthless response. Secondly, I’d like to state for the record that I look absolutely _dreadful_ in prison garb,” Daala cuts in once the channel opens for audio.

 

She can practically hear General Organa rolling her eyes from here.

 

\----

 

Rey can feel him slipping, a hollow rattle echoing from his chest on every intake of breath. Snoke’s body is eroding in a pool of the black blood leaking from his chest. She doesn’t dare get near it as it continues to eat through the stone. The strike should’ve cauterized the wound, but instead he dissolves like a fruiting body.

 

She’s managed to drag Kylo and herself towards the entrance. The ceiling of the cavernous room shakes as parts of the _Eclipse_ impact on Illum’s surface ten kilometers south of them. She can feel the shocks roll through the base and the distant terror of personnel fleeing on transports as tremors strengthen. The main body of the ship must be impacting over them.

 

“I hate breaking my word to your mother,” Rey chokes out, bright beads of blood dribbling from her mouth. Earlier, when she wasn’t herself, the force of him slinging her against a pillar shattered bone - something feels punctured as she takes reedy, thin inhales. Her lungs feel like bags deflating in liquid. The hole she put in his chest gapes beneath her hands when she presses down on him. The bond mirrors the pain in her body and she realizes that they're dying.

 

Rey presses their bloodied mouthes together and crumples across him. She feels the dark waters of something unknown start towards them.

 

\----

 

He realizes, during his last moments of consciousness, that Rey’s presence, usually burning as bright as a nova, flickers. Rey lifts her head and feels her mind unfold, spilling over into him as her pulse slows to a nonexistent murmur. He gathers the waning threads of energy in him, shoving her _out_ as the Force rushes like a tide towards him instead of taking them both. It feels like coming home.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The Chiss Ascendancy](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Chiss_Ascendancy)
> 
> [The Hapes Consortium](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hapes_Consortium)
> 
> [Prince Isolder](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Isolder)
> 
> [Rae Sloane](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Rae_Sloane)
> 
> [Illum](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ilum)
> 
> [Dun Möch quote source](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Dun_Moch)


	11. Epilogue: Form "Zero"

**Epilogue: Form “Zero”**

 

_“Form ‘Zero’, while not an actual form of lightsaber combat per se but rather an ethical principle, was the idea that Jedi should know when to use their lightsaber and when to find an alternative means of solving a problem.”_

 

**49 ABY**

 

 **Y** avin IV orbits the red gas giant Yavin Prime in the Gordian Reach. It sits only a stone’s throw, relatively speaking, from the Mandalore system. The Outer Rim is still far out of the New Republic’s jurisdiction and will remain so for many millennia to come. Those not executed for war crimes by the New Republic find sanctuary here, far removed and exiled from the Core. It's a largely peaceful existence, living in the shadow of what most consider the rebirth of Force users in the galaxy.

 

The Massassi Temple, unchanged since the first stone was lain over four thousand years ago, juts out of the green canopy of trees. It’s barely visible from this distance, nearly out of sight as two younglings trek through the underbrush on a well-worn path. 

 

“We’re not supposed to let the temple’s top get out of our sight - we’re _way_ too far away,” says the smaller of the two, already struggling to keep up with the long legged strides of the taller girl. They’re both garbed in the loose tunics and leg-wraps common amongst the youngling clans, already having ditched their robes on a handy shrub near the temple. 

 

No one was the wiser. Hopefully. Meditation drills with doddering, _ancient_ Master Tano are boring to them.

 

“Stop whining. You swore you wouldn’t complain when I decided to take you with me. Besides, I’m the oldest. _I_ get to decide when we’ve gone too far from the temple.” The one with her unruly, wild hair barely tamed into a knot at the nape of her neck puffs out her chest with self-importance as she speeds along the path. The one that wears her braid like a coronet around her brow narrows her eyes suspiciously at her sister’s back.

 

“Only by _a minute_ ,” she rebuts. 

 

They finally scramble upwards when they find a suitable tree, scraping fresh furrows of red on their already scabby knees and elbows before settling on a high branch in the canopy. Whisper birds are tucked into their roosts, teardrop shaped and suspended over empty air. The girls spend the better part of an hour floating carnivorous rodents trying to make a meal out of the young chicks and fragile eggs to the forest floor, putting tiny suggestions into their brains to go elsewhere in the jungle to find a meal. 

 

They grew up with few birds around the temple grounds. Too much dark energy that is gradually being rooted out and balanced by the growth of the Force-sensitive tree planted by Poe's mom as it leaches out the sickness from the ground. Now the population blooms. The girls like to think they’ve had a hand in it.

 

“You’re both about to earn a week’s worth of mandatory meditation drills with Master Tano if you’re not climbing down that tree trunk in the next five seconds. One, two...” calls their mother from the base of the tree. They never even _heard_ her break through the underbrush. She’s still in the roughspun of her training robes, the long hilt of her saber hanging off her belt. Her arms are set akimbo and she doesn’t look the least bit happy about them being thirty meters off the jungle floor.

 

“I _told you_ we’d get in trouble,” informs the younger sister to her rambunctious elder. They both slump their shoulders and start the slow decent down the trunk of the massassi tree, using the long, woody vines of nebula orchids to slide down. 

 

\----

 

Rey sends the girls into the house once they park the speeder in the workshop, walking the stone path back to the sprawling home situated on the lip of the lake. A short fence borders the edge of her garden, green succulents and a riot of flowers spilling over the wooden slats.

 

She stops to tip a nearby watering can over one drooping plant, smiling as its leaves curl upward towards the droplets coming from the spout. Rey resolves to work on the garden tomorrow once she hears the familiar crash of dinnerware hitting her kitchen floor and the predicted “Oops...” from one of the twins. 

 

\----

 

Rey is trying to manage dinner by herself. The girls assisted for maybe a grand total of ten minutes before getting bored with chopping the mounds of fresh greens while Rey negotiates strips of poultry into a cooked state on the burner.  

 

Beru has a frightening capacity for slicing through lockbox codes. Rey had only felt the growing suspicion that the twins were up to mischief seconds before the pair had opened up the wall safe containing older, more dangerous mementos she didn’t want lying around the house. 

 

Rey turns off the burner and stalks into the office before snatching the hilt out of Beru’s hands. Her mother’s sudden appearance startles the girl so badly that she nearly jumps out of her skin, spinning like a top before bumping into her twin. They both end up in a tangled heap on the ground near the safe - their skill at keeping their feelings out of their expressions is about as adept as their father’s. That is to say, none. They both look guilt-stricken as Rey slides the old saber back, the vents where the quillons would emit on ignition feeling abnormally hot to the touch when she _knows_ the weapon hasn’t been activated in over a decade.  

 

“That was your father’s,” she tells them when the shoddy, wire-crossed hilt of Kylo Ren’s saber disappears behind his old helm. Further back, she can see the melted, drooping socket of their great-grandfather’s mask taking up space in the back. Rey shuts the door to the wall safe and presses her hand against the access panel, sealing the old artifacts away once more. 

 

“It doesn’t look anything like yours,” notes studious, small Breha once she wriggles free from Beru. 

 

“Probably because mom has a _saberstaff_ ,” Beru chides her sibling, rolling her eyes in a fashion that makes her eerily resemble her father. They both accept their mother’s hands to help them up. She crouches to get eye-level with them, straightening out their tunics and mussed hair. Leia had taught her these particular braids to keep the girls’ hair relatively tame. She can never quite replicate the perfect twists that their grandmother tames their hair with - Rey often resorts to gathering the familiar three-knot style on top of their heads when all else fails. Thank the Force they were born fraternal. If they were born identical, she'd be lost telling them apart until one opened their mouth.

 

“That _cheek_ is something you get from your grandfather.” Rey says to Beru, blunting the scolding tone of her voice by tugging on a unruly forelock of her eldest’s dark hair. “The both of you need to go wash up for dinner. I’ve managed to replicate that custard bread recipe your grandmother forwarded me.”

 

\----

 

“She’s in rare form tonight - you need to hop on the _Falcon_ with the girls and get here by tomorrow ‘least you miss it,” Mirta notes over their open comm-line. The Mandalorian is due to marry Ghes Orade in two day cycles. Leia went ahead early and is now allegedly celebrating the impending nuptials with the rest of the Fett clan - she can hear her faintly in the background, comfortably arguing with Shysa about diplomatic ties between Mandalore and Coruscant. 

 

Rey is busy in her workshop, running maintenance checks on the speeder which is boasting a glitchy repulsorlift. The girls are at the edge of her mind, watching a holovid in the den while she works.

 

“Tell the general I chased the crawlers away from her squash crop this morning and made sure Threepio hasn’t accidentally burned down her house since she left yesterday.”

 

“I’ll pass on the message. How are you managing without any help?”

 

“I’m managing,” Rey replies tersely as she fits the flat edge of a lathe through the tiny gap between the chassis of the speeder and a maintenance panel. 

 

“You must miss him the most when you’re absolutely alone with the girls like this,” Mirta notes, not unkindly. They never mince words with one another.

 

“Terribly,” Rey admits after wrenching the panel off the speeder.

 

\----

 

After dinner, Rey turns down the ambient lights in the house before bed. She has the girls change into thin linen tunics and leg-wraps that are easily washed before she herds them out to the dock for an evening swim. They’ve found that it’s the best way to burn off any wild energy before sleep, which the twins have in droves. Rey changes out as well, sedately sinking into the water after climbing down from the dock’s ladder whereas the girls resume their reign of aquatic terror by jumping into the lake off the edge of the dock, sending up such a ruckus that Rey has to warn them to keep quiet.

 

Poe and Finn live within shouting distance along the lakeshore. They’ve been used to the Solo girls raising a riot at odd hours of the night since they were in swaddling blankets, but Rey spares them the disturbance now that the girls can control their volume.

 

Beru spends a good fifteen minutes hunting for the adolescent armored eel that’s made a home out of a sunken massassi branch near the edge of the dock, taking deep breaths before submerging. Rey keeps an eye on the constant stream of bubbles and the tiny, flickering Force signature of her daughter tugging at the edge of her consciousness. 

 

Breha serves her sister’s assistant with a tiny, waterproof globe of light Rey fashioned for her on their last birthday. She goes down to the lake's bottom with Beru and illuminates everything, holding the globe over every nook and cranny of the waterlogged branch as they try to coax the hapless eel out. The water is only a bit murky and allows Rey a good view of the proceedings from where she hauls herself out of the lake to sit on their dock. She feels the creature slithering away towards the opposite end of the lake for calmer waters. _Flee, friend_ , she urges.

 

\----

 

“The Force Wars are _my_ favorite story,” boasts Beru, “Breha likes those boring love stories from Naboo and Alderaan.”

 

“They’re not boring! They’re _informative_.” Breha stumbles over the word, but she manages to lisp it out after a few tries. The girls have a shared hobby of devouring every holo filled with books in the house. They can barely keep the archives stocked before she had to replenish the holos the girls have already watched or read through. 

 

Rey sweeps her arm, gathering the girls to her as water spins them around. “There’s nothing wrong with a love story, Beru.”

 

\----

 

“When is he supposed to get back?”

 

“I don’t know, Breha. This morning he said he’d probably be back late. Well after you two are in bed.”

 

“Yes, but _when_ , mom? He’s been gone for like, a whole _week,_ ” Beru groans, flopping into the shallow water. They’ve migrated to the shore beside the dock. 

 

Beru starts building a small castle in the sand, half-heartedly shoveling piles of it to resemble a lumpy tower. Rey gently swipes the surface of the water, the Force propelling the wave she creates to destroy the castle. When the water recedes, it tugs her daughter into her arms.

 

“When young ladies stop acting like grouches,” Rey tells her, gently spidering her fingers across her daughter’s ribs. Beru’s surly expression doesn’t hold up, crumpling into a smile as she dissolves into a fit of giggles. Rey relents when Beru joins Breha by latching onto Rey’s other shoulder.

 

A light flickers on near the front of the house. Rey can feel him brush up against the bond, a warm resonance that fills her veins as the distance gradually closes between them. She’s felt it since he landed an hour ago. When the door to the deck opens, Rey leans forward to whisper to their daughters.  

 

“Here comes your father,” she warns.

 

The two turn in unison towards the house and their expressions instantly morph, as if the sun has spread across their small faces. Rey is now old news as they bolt out of the water towards the tall figure making his way off the back deck of the house, dropping like a sack of stones as the twins make contact with his knees. They go down in a tangle of limbs and Rey hears the low murmur of his voice and the higher pitch of their daughters bombarding him with questions.

 

Rey knows that it will only be a short amount of time before Ben gathers up the girls and brings them over to where she is - she sinks down into the thick silt of the lake’s shore to wait. Her thighs submerge in the water before becoming completely concealed by its glassy opaqueness. Ripples spread out before the lake becomes still and mirror-like, reflecting the stars overhead. The universe spreads across Rey’s lap. 

 

 

**FORMS**

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Yavin IV](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Yavin_4)  
>     
> [Beru's namesake](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Beru_Whitesun_Lars)
> 
> [Breha's namesake](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Breha_Organa)
> 
> ['Master Tano'](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ahsoka_Tano)
> 
> [Form "Zero"](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Form_%22Zero%22)
> 
>  
> 
> So yes, I might've tricked a few of you to the last by making that 'major character death' warning mean Luke's death and implied Kylo Ren's demise to the very end bit of this epilogue. But who wants a dead heroine and anti-hero? Not this writer. I need a happy ending like I need air.
> 
> Firstly I'd like to thank everyone for reading and sticking with me on this month-long writing adventure into this ship. To those that are left with mixed feelings about this ending, you're not alone. I wrote three alternates that ended up getting scrapped because none felt as right as this one feels to me. My prediction is that the reality of the canon ending of these films in the next couple of years isn't going to be a happy one, and having Kylo Ren complete and survive a redemption arc was a goal I had when I set out to write this. 
> 
> To all the readers who are interested, I am writing another standalone story that is heavier with lore than this one and centered around the concept of a darker Rey only touched on in "Forms". Go check out [Ja'ak](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5775766/chapters/13310926).
> 
> Until then, my friends, may the Force be with you. 
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> \----APPENDIX----
> 
> Rey Solo is now around 33-34 years of age and Ben is pushing his mid-forties. He's not permitted within a lightyear of any world under the New Republic banner and that suits him just fine. The twins are around eight years old, born a couple of years after their parents married and settled on Yavin IV to start the restructuring of something resembling an order of Force users in the galaxy. They were named in honor of the women that raised Luke and Leia.
> 
> Rey successfully constructed a saberstaff. 
> 
> Ben rediscovered the art of constructing lightsabers after a year of trying, but Rey passed on his grandfather's hilt to him.
> 
> The Jedi and Sith are extinct and so are their wars.
> 
> Natasi Daala, Rae Sloane, and Ciena Ree were sentenced to live the remainder of their lives at the Academy on Carida, teaching a new generation of New Republic officers as penance. They're the single largest consumers of caf among the teaching staff and have never been happier.
> 
> Hux was sentenced to his father's old post at the academy on Arkanis and has to be regularly monitored for signs of sedition, but is largely doing just fine by loosing his frustration on his cadets. Phasma outpaces him in student evaluations every year. 
> 
> Leia and Ben reconciled after the birth of the twins. Leia retired on Yavin IV seven years ago to be closer to her surviving family. Her garden shares a border with Rey's.
> 
> Maz Kanata now runs a successful cantina in Yavin IV's growing capital city near the Massassi temple. Lando Calrissian, the governor of Bespin, frequents it to visit Leia.
> 
> Chewbacca is on Kashyyyk with his mate and son, finally retired. 
> 
> Poe and Finn, to literally no-one's surprise, married and adopted before moving into Poe's childhood home. Shara Bey's Force-sensitive sapling was uprooted from their yard and moved to the temple where it continues to grow. Finn is a master in the new Order and still doesn't trust Ben as far as he can throw him.
> 
> Artoo and Threepio live with Leia. BB-8 has beaten a familiar trail in the grass between all the houses on the lake to visit everyone.
> 
> Rey found out about her past and the truth didn't affect her relationship with Ben one whit.
> 
> The Force ghosts of Sith lords and Jedi alike check in, largely unseen, on the temple regularly. The Skywalkers and Obi-Wan frequent any drill the twins participate in and argue about who Beru got her hot temper from or how Breha managed to inherit her mother's battle meditation. 
> 
> The twins seem to be part of the minority that see them standing in the tree line, a faint outline of spectating ghosts.
> 
> Rey is having a boy in seven months. They're naming him Luke.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> [My Tumblr](http://avenrue.tumblr.com)


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